0:00 In the larger outside world now, uh you know, we are seeing much more suicide. Let's just be real blunt. >> Yeah. >> And it's not just men, it's women, too, but it does seem to be higher among men uh these days. You know, it raises some really complicated, but I think important, questions around what is going through people's minds that would lead them them to think that it was or should be the end of the line for them. For themselves. Goes against every bit of adaptive evolutionary biology. It goes against all religious doctrine and in terms of what's adaptive. So, it you know, there's no straightforward answer to this, but earlier we were talking about, before we were recording, perhaps people get into a tunnel of
0:45 the idea that the way they feel in the given moment is the way it's going to be forever. So, two guys sitting here who are not in that state to >> Yeah. >> kind of wonder what that is is uh we can only speculate. But, what do you think based on what you've observed, and you welcome to share if you like this. From your book, you talk about Dave. >> Yeah. >> Is there any understanding of of what's going on for people in the in the days, weeks, months, moments leading up to uh those decisions that you know, maybe we can do some good here. And help people identify if they're starting to enter that it's always going to feel like this mode. >> And there have been so many conversations about this, and there are so many programs that exist to try to help I'll I'll say it guys, because
1:31 that's the community that I came from with this. The Green Beret community has now lost more people to suicide than combat operations since 2001. >> What? >> Yep. I don't know where the SEAL community is with that, but I bet you they're close. The numbers will eclipse, for sure. So, it is an issue, but it is an unavoidable issue. Every situation is different to a degree that they share some similarities. The The So, in speaking specifically of the SEAL Teams, I mean, there's the biggest similarity, right? They came from that community, and they probably had some semblance of shared experiences, whether that be deployments, time away from family, the psychological and physiological stresses of the job.
2:18 But, it doesn't seem to impact everybody equally, either. Everybody's experiences differ. You could be in a room I was going to say with six people, but it's unlikely you'll be in a room with six people just because uh we don't generally have that many people, and we try to solve issues with as few as possible. Well, let's say four. I have no understanding why the same shared experience, although maybe viewed from a slightly different angle, in totality could break somebody, but not the other three. Or why everybody has a different volume of you know, if somebody's got this much volume versus this much versus a thimble. And I don't I don't understand why those experiences seem to break some people, or in my opinion, I think they can, if
3:04 you put the work in, make you an even better version of yourself. And I also think that you can pour some of the stuff out or drill a hole in the bottom and work through these things. >> [snorts] >> Dave being the example, uh the things that stick out would be And again, this is me This is me speaking. I can't speak for Dave. There was a huge delta, I think, between how he thought of himself and how other people thought of him. And in most of the funerals that I've gone to that involved suicide, the number one question is why? Why didn't somebody reach out for help? Or And maybe they did because you don't you know, you don't I mean, I guess you could look at their electronic device,
3:50 or maybe it was a face-to-face. It's hard to say. But the difference in what Dave left behind. He left behind some journals. And I think that there are pros and cons. If you are in a place where you have the opportunity to read somebody's what they have left behind and not, you may not want to know. It may make it more difficult because I've also seen people attach a very immense amount of grief because they either think that what was written and left behind was specifically about them or they Oh man, I was there and I could have, you know, the coulda woulda shoulda, which is all hypothetical and doesn't change the fact that it already happened. But I've seen people deeply deeply struggle with that.
4:35 >> [snorts] >> So that that would be the negative. The pro could be perhaps, I don't know, closure. So it really depends on the person. Choose wisely as somebody who has a experienced that. >> [snorts] >> Um my experience is it was a combination of both. I I felt a deeper level of understanding, but also a deep sense I wish I would have done more. >> [snorts] >> The internal struggles and self-talk and monologue, I couldn't read it without crying. And I don't think he realized how highly other people thought of him. The gap between the two is just unbelievable. He He and not everybody
5:21 is. He was isolated at the time. There was alcohol involved to the best of my knowledge. Which unfortunately, especially in the community that I come from, those two things are pretty often tied. Not always, but often tied alcohol and that decision as well. And the stats are pretty well back about, you know, the alcohol being a You could speak to this and you know, the central nervous system depressant. So it's not it's not like, "Yeah, yeah, I'm feeling the best I've ever felt." It generally will spiral you in the other direction. But when I look at Dave, he was and is to this day what I would consider to be the standard for a team guy. And what I loved about him so much is that not only did he expect that standard from other people, but he held it in himself. And actually more than that. I think I would say he held
6:08 himself to a higher standard than he would hold other people to. If you met his standard, you were going to get two thumbs up. Probably not a pat on the back, but you were going to get two thumbs up and you were going to know you did a good job. If you did not meet his standard, which I tested many times, you were very specifically told where you're deficient in life and as a human being. And he, God, he had a tongue like a whip. He was awesome. And uh I think at the end, and this is me speaking for him a little bit, I think he arrived at a place where he couldn't live with the reality that he couldn't hold himself to the standard that he had expected from other people and I think it destroyed him.
6:54 But I don't know if he shared that with anybody. I don't think so. Some of the last people that he spoke with knew that he was struggling, for sure. He He had an alcohol addiction issue, for sure. And for clarity, I mean, that's Dave would be pissed actually if I didn't mention that cuz he would never tolerate anybody else beating around the bush. He legitimately had an an issue with alcohol as some people do from that community. They knew that he was struggling. He's the only guy I know who did multiple treatments of I have zero experience in psychedelics, but from listening to people talk about ayahuasca and ibogaine, rides that don't seem to be a very good time and oftentimes will instantaneously change the relationship they have with substances, whether it's
7:39 opiates or alcohol. Not that you'd would drink again, but their their relationship with it just shifts. They're like, "You know what? I don't even have the desire to do so." 72 hours later, 96 hours later, and it's not like he just tried once. He would go back. He would even facilitate treatment for other people. But it wasn't working for him, but he wasn't he wasn't sharing that. And that isolation and loneliness and that difference between that standard and what he was able to do got him to that place where he put a gun in his mouth, you know alone isolated at his family home in Florida. And when everybody showed up at the
8:25 funeral, it's like, "What could we What could we have done more?" And that And that happens at every Nobody's at a funeral saying, "I did everything I could." Never have heard that, by the way. To just God, I nailed it. I'm like, "Really?" Exhibit A would like, none of us nailed it. We all [ __ ] up. Or did we do the best that we could and it's something that we can't stop? I don't know. I've have I've started to have pretty deep conversations with friends around from that community around what can be done. I don't think an absolutist approach is good. I think driving to zero is possible because is impossible because it's a it's a an affliction that strikes all of humanity. A reductionist approach I think is helpful.
9:11 But at this point, I don't know what else can be done. I mean, millions of dollars advocated towards these type of programs. Things like Ambio, you know, just south of the border, or what Marcus and Amber compadre doing with vets, which are largely an interface to that There's portals and people, and I'm on some of these groups where even the inkling somebody is in trouble or you need help, like people are they're trying to get stuff done, getting connected, people are getting on airplanes and I was with mutual friend DJ, I think it was last week and one of his new guys who had become a team leader, who had gotten out, just killed himself. >> And both and we we sit there with faces like this
9:56 with things that are un that we don't know what to say. In between us, I don't know. I don't know what's going on there. >> Yeah, well, I certainly don't know either. I think that um if we can borrow anything useful from other areas of uh mental health and neuroscience, cuz it I think ultimately this is a brain issue, right? I don't think it's like a gut health issue, although that could impact it, right? I might be wrong. >> but >> Right, could be yeah, I mean that it could be but but I think it's a a thought process that leads to a decision that, you know, and that's in the brain. >> So, if we were to just take like start at ground truths, not to try and make this reductionist, we'd say maybe suicidality is not one thing.
10:41 Just like we know that you can get a fever from a lot of things. I don't want to say no one is immune because I do think that fortunately it's, you know, not everybody, but maybe everyone has the potential to go there and there's certain buffers that we're not aware of. >> You might come out of the box immune to it, but I think either something psychologically or physiologically can happen that maybe could open a door that had started off >> closed. That's a guess. >> In all these instances that are leaping to mind are unfortunately real-life suicides. Every single one of the people um was a very high performer at one point, highly very highly regarded, revered, etc. And so I I think you've really um touched on something important, which is that this notion of like it's lonely at
11:27 the top, that there's it's true that there's people are busy, you know, there's not the general public is not so concerned about, you know, winners and their plight, you know, but when you hear about something like this, you know, um you realize that it people can be quite lonely and perhaps as the number of true peers that somebody has because they're in a leadership position over already ultra-high performers, yeah, the need to impress, the need to not have their their image shattered is it goes up and up and up and up. There might be something there. I think there's certainly important work to be done, but there aren't real data, I don't think, on the number of people who were kind of veering in this direction, but somebody reached out. Yeah. And then they're 6 months later saying, "Hey, thanks, you know, I you know, you really helped me back when." And maybe they weren't right
12:13 at that edge. Yeah. So, we don't have data on what worked to keep people away from this edge, either. So, it's a really tough problem. But, you know, tough problems are tractable. >> Yeah, I worry less about the guys who are able to verbalize what they're going through. It's the ones who are more quiet. You know, you talk about, you know, lonely at the top. Dave I left Dave's military career largely out of it. He originally wanted to go to Development Group and didn't make it through the screening process. I think largely more due to a personality conflict with one of the instructors, which totally happens. You get on somebody's radar, you might have to come back through. But, he ended up going to another JSOC command that works at an incredibly high level, very less known,
13:00 oftentimes by yourself in adversarial countries, and he crushed it there I think for like 10 years. I mean, it's like the top performer of performers. And then they contracted him to come back and teach guys in their own very long selection course. What I didn't realize is how much he was struggling just holding up that image, though. A part of their selection course occurs out in Las Vegas. He had more than one incident where he thought his career was going to be over cuz he went out and got [ __ ] faced and got arrested. They work so independently and individually so often. Nobody even realized he had gotten in trouble.
13:45 Until his security clearance came back around and it popped on his security clearance. Which then you know it leads to a whole variety of other things but that happened to him while he was active and then after while he was out. But if you were looking at the guy You you mean you'd say to him how do I match your career exactly? What exactly are you doing to be able to do what it is that you're doing? Man behind the curtain, holy [ __ ] Just suffering. You can see it in the writing just in the the shape and texture of the words. You can you can see it degrading towards the end. It's gnarly. >> And look I'm not one of these people that thinks everyone should just go do
14:31 Ibogaine which is not a recreational >> experience. You know right but I was going to say the fact that he did >> That has worked I'll just say this on said it publicly before I'll make sure I hammer this you know straight in the middle that I've been very supportive of veteran solutions because and the work that was being done at Stanford to support them. The arc of both successful escape from addiction and PTSD or whatever you want to call it through the proper use of Ibogaine medically supervised. As well as the number of just tragic instances of people who didn't make it there. I happen to know Chad Wilkinson's wife and talk to Sarah you know and you know it's a painful thing to be [clears throat] at these things and hear all these wonderful stories of people that feel like they were rescued their spouse was rescued and then the spouses
15:18 that are there are saying you know But grateful this exists and I'm I'm frustrated that it wasn't there in time for their spouse or parent or, you know, so or kid. So, many people have benefited, but some people just seem like they're refractory to it. Well, hopefully talking about suicide frankly will will um get people thinking about different avenues around it. I don't know the >> Yeah, I don't know the angle. I mean, I've tried to focus sometimes on talking about the impact that it has on those left behind in the hopes that that would I don't know. Buy somebody a 1% maybe think about that for 1% and it changes literally the trajectory of their life.
16:04 I don't understand the choice I'll I will describe the choice of ending your own life as an irrational decision. That's I can't make any sense of it other than to say like you said, it goes against every evolutionary everything that we can understand. So, somehow people are arriving at an irrational decision and considering it to be the only rational solution. Talking about the people that they left behind and the impact it's going to have doesn't seem to have impacted it all. I don't I don't know what the answer is. Many times, you know, I've whatever is left behind or text messages, the world's better off with You know what I mean? Better off without me. They feel I'm not going to say they feel as if they're doing the world a
16:50 favor. That's That's not what I mean to say, but often times the language is close to that. Like, I'm doing this because you will be better off without me. And again, irrational decision as their only rational option. I don't I don't know. >> I don't know. My mind goes to all these places and maybe I've uh spent um more than my fair share of time with uh uh our mutual friend Eddie Penny where I I actually think and and forgive me cuz I'm a scientist, but these days I talk very openly. I actually think that evil forces can hijack people's minds. I know it sounds crazy. It sounds like conspiracy, but I believe that inside of our minds we have a susceptibility to positive messaging and we have a susceptibility to evil messaging and it can come in in different forms and I think bad forces can work through us and
17:35 they tend to come through the places of shame. They come through the things that we don't want to acknowledge. They're like the way it was described to me by someone far smarter than me is it's like a lighthouse that's you know spinning its um its illumination and then there's like there's like some like dirt on the on the lighthouse and it casts this like shard of a shadow and that's where stuff comes in and gets us and if we can kind of see that stuff and really acknowledge it, that's kind of what the real trauma process trauma healing process is about. Once you own it, it's very different. Things can't get to you the same way. Now, I'm speaking in like riddles and metaphors here, so it so I want to be careful cuz I'm a scientist. I believe in biology, but I think that hopefully conversations like these will start to open up the the thought and maybe in the dialogue around this cuz I think the mental
18:21 health community, but really the general public needs to start thinking about this in a real way because the numbers as you mentioned in the SEAL teams and other special operations communities are staggering, but it's growing. I mean and on and on and I don't believe anyone is completely immune just given the the the examples. These are people who had quote unquote everything going for them and then some. So God willing this will have some positive impact. >> I think it's important [clears throat] that somebody like yourself as a scientist is open to other non-scientific answers or possibilities at least. Because we clearly don't have it figured all out yet. That I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty sure scientists don't know everything regardless of how some of them might
19:07 like to tell you that they do. >> Definitely do not know everything. >> And if we don't know everything, maybe let's just keep it open to possibilities because in that journey, hopefully one day we will figure out everything. But if we lose a bunch of people along the way because we were unwilling to at least even table a conversation about something maybe outside of the science realm, I don't think it's worth knowing everything. >> [music]
