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Sept. 21, 2025 - Stew Peters Show
01:06:08
Dead Truth: Deep Conversation About Veteran Suicide
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Earlier this week I found myself engaged in a conversation with a perfect stranger about military issues and the topic of veteran suicide came up.
Now, veteran suicide isn't something that is a foreign topic to us on this show.
But this gentleman was asking me questions.
I didn't quite have what seemed to me to be reasonable answers to.
So I thought I would do some digging and some watching and some reading.
And I came up with some pretty interesting, what I think is pretty interesting information that maybe we don't think about.
So today we're going to have uh a different discussion about veteran suicide.
Uh so stick with us, don't go away.
We're gonna get into this.
we start now Hey everybody and welcome here to the next installment of the Richard Leonard Show.
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Enough about that for today.
Uh let's get started.
So as I was saying, uh I found myself in this pretty intriguing actually conversation uh with this random gentleman uh about veteran suicide.
And I think we all know that it's a problem, right?
Uh a lot of veterans um are taking their own lives uh at an alarming rate.
And this guy, he he looked me in the face and he asked me why.
It was why is it do you think?
Why is it do you think that these men and women, they they join up, they join the military of their own free will, they walk into recruiting station, they go through all the steps, they raise their hand, they take an oath, they go through basic training, which for um a lot of people is is a living hell.
And in my opinion, it's gotten a lot less of a living hell than it used to be, and and I'm sure that the folks that came long before I did would say that uh when I went through it, it was a lot less of a living hell than when they went through, and I'm sure it was.
but I didn't have a good answer for him.
I didn't know why.
I mean, I had the, I had the programmed answers, right?
I had the, the, the answers that we hear from the VA and, and the things that we read that you know, like the DOD puts out, and there's nonprofits that specialize in mental health, and and they'll do studies and surveys about veteran suicide.
And they'll say, This is a huge problem.
And some of the reasons are A, B, C and D, but they're all very broad.
So I was quite intrigued, and I started to do some digging.
And when I started, I got a lot of those same answers.
You know, and I took some notes here.
Uh, and I'm not I'm not sure how accurate these percentages or these numbers are.
Um, but they seem to be within, you know, they were all pretty close to each other across different sources.
Um, so I didn't cite any of them, but I just kind of took note for conversation's sake.
Um the biggest most talked about issue was transitioning to back to civilian life, which I think is a is a pretty it's pretty much a no-brainer, right?
We all know that civilian life and military life is a lot different, even if you never go to war, even if you never deploy.
Um if you're one of those people that uh, you know, you go off to basic training in whatever branch it is, and you decide to be an admin clerk or something, you know, like a HR type person.
You're gonna do HR work, or you'd be do some kind of medical thing, you're gonna do medical stuff, and you do your four years or or whatever it is, and then you move on uh to wherever you want to go.
See, the thing is that everybody uses the military.
They use their military service in in their own ways.
Some folks come in, they do their couple years, they get the they get the their skill set that they're looking for.
Uh they they get their money to go to school, and they're going to school and they're doing their thing, and then they move on, and that's great.
But it's clearly a bigger problem.
Uh so transitioning back to civilian life.
Forty percent of veterans face high levels of difficulty when transitioning.
Okay, what does that mean?
There was no further information, just a bulleted list with some percentages.
80% of veterans say that the public does not understand what the issues are that they face when transitioning back to civilian life.
Well, I can understand that that's probably true.
Because we don't ever talk about what those problems are.
35% say that they're having a very difficult time with finances.
So paying bills, uh being able to uh to to keep track of their money well enough to provide food for their families, pay the rent, pay the car notes, things like that.
The financial literacy is kind of how that breaks down to me.
Another website just said relationship problems, financial problems, and legal problems, all very broad.
And see, so here's the thing that kind of bothered me about this stuff, is they give you these things, and it becomes to me more of a marketingslash sales type thing, because the next sentence usually says, for more information, click here, and then you click here, they want your email address, and they want to gather your information and all that jazz.
Well here's the trouble with that, in my opinion.
If we are going to as a community of people try to rally to really affect change on this topic, I believe that we have to begin to have these conversations, the hard, the hard conversations.
The conversations that make us uncomfortable.
Which if you watch this show or you watch the Stu Peters Network, certainly if you watch the Stu Peter show, you're you're not, it's not foreign to you, right, to at least listen to these uncomfortable conversations.
But if we're gonna help the men and women that have defended this country of their own free will, and then battle the demons that sometimes just come late at night,
we have to have those difficult conversations, and I think that those conversations are had kind of the trouble is that we don't ever get a whole lot of real good answers about why.
I mean, yeah, of course, relationship and financial and legal issues, we can probably assume and we're guess or just kind of brainstorm what some of those things are.
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But the real question is when a veteran is at his lowest point and he's sitting in his garage on his brand new motorcycle, maybe with a with a his ninth beer next to him or in one hand and a gun in the other.
What is it?
What are the thoughts that are going through their mind that make them believe that this is the best option, and in that moment, raise that gun, take a sip of beer or whatever, raise that gun to their head and pull the trigger.
Or raise that fistful of pills to their mouth, wash it down with a beer and just wait for their wait for themselves to fall asleep to never wake up.
What is it in the moment that that makes them think that yep, this is what's gonna happen.
And full clarity.
Folks, I've been there.
I've been in those moments.
More than one time.
I like to say, I like to tell people when I have these conversations about my story in particular.
That I just I probably just don't have the balls to do it.
But I think that I can understand how some veterans get there.
And I don't know man.
I think that these are the types of conversations that need to take place for any any gap to be bridged.
Any understanding to be had.
Now, I would agree that the general public probably doesn't understand what kind of issues veterans may face when coming home and trying to transition back into civilian life, Because, to be quite honest, folks, I don't know that many people want to know.
Okay.
And so where I where I struggle with all of this is where do you start?
Right?
Where do you and that's probably the that's probably the issue, right?
Like we we try to think about where do we start this conversation and where to like how do we ease into it, and how do we start, how do we start slow and and smooth and build up to the ugly and talk about the ugly and then transition back down to to slow and smooth and not so ugly.
But the reality of the situation is that it's F and ugly.
And until until we as communities own that and are willing to have those conversations with the veterans in our communities that are important to us.
I don't know that there's going to be any resolve to this issue.
This is a real epidemic in our country, in my opinion.
We've said that before here.
Until we start to do that and have those conversations, the only way it's gonna end is until we're all dead.
Or until all of the ones that that didn't see a better way out are dead.
I came across the quote that kind of that kind of wrung some truth in my head.
And it says this, the mark of a great nation is not only its military strength, but also how it looks after its war fighters.
And I think that that is something that I think that we talk about that, right, as communities, when we want to rag on the government, we want to rag on the VA.
But this kind of also goes in line with what I was just saying, that we also have to be willing to face it.
The truth is, guys, that I believe that veterans struggle with this stuff because we know we know that the people around us don't want to know the real truth.
And maybe it's a it's an issue of we don't know that the real truth can be tolerated for fear of judgment for fear of self-judgment and not Having to relive some horrible things that may have happened to any individual.
But also remember that a large percentage of veterans and military members that decide to take their own lives have also never deployed to combat.
And so that can't be the only answer.
And we'll get to that part later.
I think that if we were to sit down, if we were to construct a circle, right, and sit down, fifteen veterans, combat experience or not, probably a mix of.
And fifteen civilians.
Maybe that have military folks in their family, maybe they don't.
And just have that discussion about what is this that everyone likes to call it a transition.
I don't know that it's necessarily a transition as just a desire to be normal again.
To be like everybody else again.
But then there's also conflict because you know that you can never be normal, normal, whatever that is, again, because you're forever changed.
Because there's things that the military inherently takes out of you from the get go.
Things like empathy.
I think that I think that your ability to have empathy is for some people just gone.
Like it's they have no empathy for anybody, and it might be partly a defense mechanism against the horrors of whatever your job is.
And I would imagine that folks who are playing in more of combat roles would struggle with this.
And it's probably not even a struggle for them at this point, but this is an issue for them in their transition, if you will.
But also, the military inherently takes out your ability to ask for help.
When you know that you need it.
If you need it.
And I think that those are two pretty profound things that just your...
Some will call it indoctrination.
Your indoctrination into military culture removes out of your personality.
But in my experience, I feel like I am still an empathetic person when I need to be, but I certainly am okay with stepping over bodies, even though it might affect me later.
But just think about this.
Think about being in a combat zone, being an infantry soldier, right?
And doing a dismount and patrol somewhere in some foreign land.
And as we all know, the war in the Middle East, you never really knew who your enemies were.
It was men, women, children...
I mean, shit, I remember um finding IEDs in the ass ends of dead animals.
The only way you would see it is because the wind blew some palm leaves out of the way and you could see the wires coming out of its behind.
But it wasn't abnormal for soldiers to get involved in skirmishes or gunfights or whatever.
And when the smoke cleared, there's women and children laying dead on the ground.
Missing body parts, missing missing faces, dismembered bodies.
Things that probably the human mind wasn't necessarily designed to take large amounts of.
But in those moments, there really is no time to think.
There's no time to stop and look at the destruction and have an emotional response.
Yes.
Right?
Because you must remain hyper vigilant.
And you must remain aware.
And you must remain present.
For the rest of your team, for your battle buddies.
They're depending on you just as you're depending on them, of course.
And so there's no time to feel.
There's no time to process.
us.
But I'll promise you one thing.
Those images don't go away.
Those sounds don't go away.
Those smells don't go away.
Those tastes don't go away.
They're always there, and they may not be forever present.
They may just show up at random times.
You may have something that just triggers it right off the bat, and you don't even know it's coming.
But they're there.
There may be something that doesn't bother you for 10 years, and one day you lay down to go to sleep, you close your eyes, and there it is.
There's those images.
Thank you.
And you shake it off, and once you start to fall asleep, then you mysteriously have this taste in your mouth.
And now you remember that whole thing like it was yesterday.
And so I guess I say all this to try to build this picture about war in general and how war is ugly and how for a lot of soldiers, especially soldiers with families and little kids, or just kids in general, they don't want to don't want to bring those things home.
Those things don't necessarily belong here.
So you internalize them.
And in the military, you're taught to suck it up and drive on.
It doesn't matter if you don't mind.
It doesn't matter if you don't mind.
Or if you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
And I get it, right?
I I understand, and I can and I can play along with that.
But it's not the case for for everybody.
And the truth of the matter is that we're losing war fighters at alarming rates.
And if it's something as simple as all we gotta do is just have a conversation and not be scared to have this conversation.
Understand where these folks are maybe coming from.
And not make them feel like their pride has to be hurt because they're having these conversations.
Maybe that would help.
We've run out of time in this segment, folks.
Damn it, or just getting into it a good groove too, see?
This is why I don't watch the clock all the time.
uh anyway stick with us we'll be right back Hey folks, real quick before we get back to the show.
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Hey folks, welcome back here.
Um, uh, I gotta tell you, after that first segment, I feel kind of heavy.
Um, I mean, we gotta we gotta continue on, right?
This is this is exactly what I'm talking about, like these tough conversations, and I feel like the the talk wasn't even all that difficult.
Uh but there is just this heaviness, and I feel I feel like the show is kind of slow and boring and quiet, but it's important.
And so like we ended the last segment talking about like this picture of war and how there's there's really no time for emotional response, and there's no time to think, and there's no time to do anything but act and remain hyper vigilant and mission focused.
And I believe that the next step of that, the next step of that that issue is the return home, right?
We we get through uh this deployment, this this however long it is for for different branches, there are different amounts of time, or at least they were and then you find yourself on a plane,
or for some people a ship or a boat or whatever, but you find yourself on your way home, and you start wondering what is this gonna be like and you have super high hopes about what being home is gonna feel like what that first embrace with your kids or your wife or your parents or
your brothers and sisters or whoever's most important to you, what all that's gonna be like, and usually it's amazing.
You know, you step off a plane or you get off of a bus, and there's people lining the streets.
You know, when we came home from our first deployment, it seemed like almost every uh National Guard soldier from the state was deployed, and I think most of us were.
I mean, there was a lot of us.
But as we were coming home on buses, there were cars and people lining the highways and the streets and waving flags and cheering and all kinds of stuff.
And it was really cool to see.
And it was really cool to see.
But I want you to I want you to think about this.
Think about for a second how Vietnam veterans were treated when they came home.
They were yelled at, they were spit at, people were throwing things at them.
Just completely disrespected.
And and and really, as nice as it is, as nice as the fanfare is, as nice as the flag waving is and all that stuff, the reality is in my opinion that most soldiers they just want to be home.
For a lot of people, it's hey man, we had a job to do, we went and did our job.
Thank you for being Here.
But we just did we just do what we were supposed to do.
We just did what we were told to do.
That's what our job is.
But then all these words come out.
Right?
Like this hero word.
And here's how I here's how it ties in to Vietnam veterans, I think.
And and I've had several conversations with many different Vietnam veterans over the years.
And this one gentleman in particular.
After I got home from my first deployment, uh I was in a rough spot.
Um it was it was uh it was shortly after uh my first suicide attempt and um I was sitting in a VFW and I met this this older fella, turned out he was a Vietnam veteran, and uh his face was pretty disfigured.
And so, you know, after six, seven, eight, nine drinks, we start talking.
And he was a tunnel rat.
He was a tunnel rat in Vietnam, and if any of you don't know what that is, his job was to uh strip down most of his gear, just a uniform and a helmet and a pistol, sometimes I guess maybe not even a helmet, but just the clothes on his back and a pistol and crawl through these tunnels to find enemy and take out as many of them as he can and get the hell out of there before more of them come.
And he was telling me that when he finally rotated back home, he had found himself standing at the edge of the driveway of his parents' house, and he couldn't believe just couldn't believe that he was there.
And for everything that him and all of his buddies went through, and he had lost quite a few friends over there.
Couldn't believe that he was standing there, and out of nowhere he was blindsided by somebody, never saw who it was, never heard or saw them coming, and they beat him mercifully or merciless murder they beat the hell out of him.
Sorry, I couldn't I can't get the word out of him.
They beat the hell out of him, and his face was forever disfigured.
And without even being asked, he added to the end of the conversation.
He said, You know what?
I wasn't even mad.
I wasn't even mad, I wasn't I wasn't expecting anybody to call me a hero.
I wasn't expecting anybody to raise flags and wave them and and throw confetti and have ticker tape parades.
So I wasn't it was I wasn't looking for any of that.
I was just happy to be home.
He said, because the truth of the matter is that a lot of those names that they called us, they were true.
We did.
We did kill innocent people.
Women and children died.
Elderly men and women died at our hands as a result of our actions.
He added that I can he said I can say with a clear conscience that I did not kill anybody that was not supposed to be killed on purpose.
He goes, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
And that's why I got to thinking about that.
And that this whole story came up when I was talking to this fella the other day about why.
Why do veterans feel the need to go through all of this horrible stuff just to get home and kill themselves.
And I think that maybe one of those answers is that they find it hard or extremely difficult to find a reason to keep living.
Because carrying that burden, the burden of the title of a I mean the hero is a is a is a pretty it's a pretty damn strong title.
But if you know deep down in your in your soul in your core that maybe not everything you did was heroic.
Well, that's a tough pill to swallow.
That's a tough burden to carry.
So maybe maybe that has something to do with it.
Maybe that is a, maybe that's part of the issue that we find ourselves in today.
But we we we can't we can't shy away from that.
We have to allow we have to allow these men and women to to process these actions that were taken, the experiences that they had, and let their truth be their truth without without having to feel like they have to carry and live up to this title.
To be quite honest, I would imagine that looking somebody in the face, a perfect stranger, and having them say something like, Oh my god, you're a hero, thank you for your service is extremely uncomfortable.
I have a f I have a very good friend of mine.
I love him dearly, my buddy Mike.
He likes to introduce me as his friend Richard the American hero, and I think he does it to get under my skin because he knows it bothers me.
But how can it not?
I don't think I did anything heroic.
And it's uh I don't I don't dislike it because I'm shy about it, I don't dislike it because um, you know, I I think that my friend is joking with me about it, and maybe he feels and other people feel like these men and women really are heroic and they're heroes,
and maybe that's their truth, but also realize that that's one hell of a burden to carry on your shoulders, especially when you may be ashamed of some of the things that you had to do,
maybe to just survive, maybe it was by accident, but then internalizing that and living with it and dwelling on it and just letting it fester in inside of you and eating it up because those are things, as I said earlier, that don't necessarily belong here.
And I think that a lot of a lot of a lot of veterans feel that way.
I don't I don't want to be the guy who claims to be speaking for every veteran in the United States of America.
In the course of my travels, I've spoken with a lot of veterans.
I've had a lot of very deep conversations, and I know how I feel about my experience, but in no way, shape, or form, am I trying to articulate how I think every veteran in our country feels.
And nor do I want to be the spokesperson for everybody.
But I think that if you were to go out and ask these questions of other veterans in your community, that you might, you just might be able to get them to agree to some of this.
And so I think that that takes us into the next.
The next part, which is that the seeds, this this whole idea of suicide, and how this could even be a possibility for soldiers, that seed, I believe, is planted during times of war before these people get home.
And it all depends on your experience.
The relationships that you form while serving your country with the people on your team in your platoon in your flight, whatever it is that your team is called,
that there's they're called lots of different things across all branches of service, but the relationships that you form with the people that you serve with, in many, many instances, in my opinion, become a lot stronger than anybody else in your life.
Stronger than your sibling, stronger than your parents, stronger than your best friend from high school, stronger than the neighbor kid that you played baseball with for thirteen years and then went to college and shared a dorm room with or whatever.
The people, the people that you grew up in the military with, train day in and day out, and then fight with you kill with them and do everything in your power to avoid being killed with them
only to sometimes, in many cases, to lose them on the battlefield or off.
Thank you.
Sometimes I think that that becomes more of a burden than anybody can bear for too long.
But again, we're taught, right?
We're taught and we're trained to internalize, suck it up and drive on, get on to the next thing, go to the next thing.
You can feel later.
And I think that even after after your time in the service, those things stay with you until you just can't suck it up and drive on anymore.
And then that comes with a lot of regrets.
It comes with a lot of what ifs.
And then you find yourself sitting on that motorcycle in your garage with a beer in one hand and a gun in the other.
And that just might be the whole thought process that allows you to decide that this is okay.
This is the best way.
Because I don't want to feel this anymore.
I don't want to feel this anymore.
And I think that now, more than ever, with the current state of our of our country and the and all the bullshit going on and all the hatred and all the division, all the corruption.
This is something that could be, I don't want to say that it could be easily solved, but I think that we could have a lot easier time solving this issue, or at least making a really good dent in it.
And part of that solution, in my opinion, would be that the ownership, the ownership of the burden of war is shared amongst everybody in this country.
If you live in this country and you benefit from military action, you own it.
And I'm not saying that anybody has to go and throw themselves out on the pyre and burn for it, right?
I mean, it's that's that's pretty extreme.
What I'm saying is that you own it by being willing to have the conversations, by not being that person that doesn't want to know, that doesn't want to hear about it.
Because at one point, it was okay.
It was okay that we're sending three thousand soldiers here this month, and we're sending twenty, five hundred soldiers there next month, but out of those three thousand, only twenty, six hundred came back, and out of that two thousand, only nineteen hundred and fifty came back.
Well, all of us need to own that.
Yes, our military is volunteer.
There's no draft, there's no mandatory service terms for for uh citizens of this country, which maybe there should be, but I believe that we all need to collectively own it, and we all needed to collectively come together and make a dent in this in this issue.
We all need to be willing to understand the why, and then be willing to do something about it, and doing something about it could be as easy as just listening,
or just being willing to be open to hearing about how ugly it really is.
Because at times of war, folks, is when you learn a whole lot about what the world is really about.
You learn a lot about how ugly mankind really can be to each other.
You learn a lot about how brutal the world really is.
But you also learn a lot about how beautiful the world is you learn a lot about fortitude And courage and bravery.
When you hear these stories about how these soldiers take care of each other and get each other through the hardest times of their lives, hands down.
But none of those things will ever come to light if we're not willing to have the conversation or at least listen to it.
And tell these folks that it's okay.
That we're here.
If it's true that 80% of veterans who can commit suicide are doing it because they believe the public doesn't understand the issues that they're going through.
In my opinion, that's a really easy fix.
In my opinion, that's a really easy fix.
but we gotta own it you are responsible Just like I'm responsible.
And I went there and did it.
But when I wasn't there, I'm responsible for sending them there also.
And I don't mean responsible for telling them, hey, uh, by the way, fellas, uh, secure your gear, pack it up, we're moving out tomorrow morning at 08, getting on the plane, we're gonna go uh to uh Fallujah, we're gonna take the town, and we're gonna just decimate the place, and then it'll be ours.
I don't mean taking ownership like that, but I mean taking ownership of helping these men and women who think that there's no better option than to swallow a fistful of pills and leave their families and their kids and all these people behind.
The the aftermath of suicide is crazy.
If any of you have ever been through it, I I my heart goes out to you because it's it's a it's crazy.
There's so many questions or so many emotions, and a lot of those questions go unanswered for ever unless you find a letter or something, but even then your questions go unanswered.
But start today, guys, start today.
If you know anybody that has served this country, challenge yourself, I challenge you.
Challenge yourself to reach out to them, text message, um, any of these social media platforms, call them, walk next door, ring their doorbell, and just let them know that you're there.
It could be the difference that they're looking for, it could be the understanding of the issues that they believe that you don't get it.
Could be all it takes.
If we have one day, even one day with zero veteran suicides, that's a win.
But we all have to own it, everybody.
Because we're all responsible, and you know why?
Because we are all benefiting from the spoils of war, if you will, so own it.
We can't sit idle anymore.
And I'm really glad that I decided to have this conversation because I don't ever want to be in a situation I was in with this guy the other day.
When somebody asked me, why do you think that this is such a big problem?
I don't want to say, I don't know.
I want to have something to say.
And I hope that I've given you something to also say and something to think about and something to expound on and maybe something to research some more or some questions to ask people around you.
We got to own it together.
One last statistic to put this all this whole thing in perspective for you.
Out of approximately every 21 veterans who kill themselves that we lose to suicide, approximately every 21 veterans that we lose to suicide.
I said it twice for you.
We've only lost one service member to an enemy combatant in combat.
Now that was as of 2020, or I'm sorry, 2019.
So that number could have changed over the last few years.
But that's a that's a pretty sobering, it's a pretty sobering number.
For every one soldier we lost in combat to an enemy combatant, we've lost at least 21 to suicide.
How can we be arguably the strongest military force in the world?
Nobody can beat us.
Arguably.
But we can't look after our own war fighters.
We can't look after our own people...
And do something to help them feel welcome at home, like they're understood.
After they went and fought the war.
They're so misunderstood and they're so isolated they feel that their only option is to take their own life.
They believe that the world is a better place without them.
They believe that their kids are better without them, that their parents are better without them, their spouses, their community, everybody is better without them.
How the hell are we the strongest force in the world?
Can't take care of our own people.
Just something to think about.
Anyway, folks, we've uh today went really fast.
We ran out of time.
Um I really uh I really appreciate you being here and listening.
And please, please, please, if you have anybody that you think may be in this boat, even if you're not sure or think that there's not a chance, just reach out.
All it takes is, hey man, are you good?
Let's let's go have let's go get some ice cream or let's go get a beer, let's get a soda.
Let's stand out, let's stand out on the front stoop and have a cigar, something.
Let's do something, just check in.
Um take care of yourselves, check in on each other.
Thank you again for being here.
We will see you next week.
Um have a great evening.
Good night.
Good night.
As Christians in a Christian country, we have a right to be at minimum agnostic about the leadership being all Jewishly occupied.
We literally should be at war with fucking Israel a hundred times over, and instead, we're just sending them money, and it's fucking craziness.
Look at the side of Israel, look at the side of Tel Aviv and look at the side of Philadelphia.
You tell me where this money's going.
You tell me who's benefiting from this.
I am prepared to die in the battle.
Fighting this monstrosity that would wish to enslave me and my family and steal away any rights to my property.
And to take away my God, go fuck yourself.
Will I submit to that?
And if you've got a foreign study, you go dual citizens in your government.
Who do you think they're supporting?
God, right now, would you protect the nation of Israel?
And protect those of us, not just our church, but every church in the world and in this nation that's willing to put their neck on the line and say we stand with them.
You got Biden's cabinet.
It's full of Jews.
I have a black friend in school.
I have nothing against blacks.
She has nothing against me.
She understands where I'm coming from.
Excuse me, I'm a Jew, and I just like to say that, you know, in our Bible it says that you're you're like animals.
The Jews crucified our God.
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