This is the second half of the old episode with Desert Storm-era Army veteran Rick Stevens. It has always been a very important story and one of my favorites but has taken on even more significance in light of things I recently learned.

During the pandemic, I did a lot of research via documentaries and audiobooks. From the knowledge I gained sprang the idea to shine a spotlight on and, as best I could, personalize the individual lives and losses of our Hero brothers and sisters via suicide. In the attempt to get more information, I reached out to my Hero network and was connected to a resource at the VA who shared with me some terribly disappointing and frustrating information that directly relates to Rick's story and those like him.

I would ask you to hear Rick's story in his own words, but here is what I recently learned: When I asked my VA contact about the suicide numbers, the initial response was, "Do you want suicides or overdoses?". Of course, my response was, "Dead is dead; what's the difference?" As it was then explained, the VA differentiates between the two. As a female veteran with numerous (ancient history) suicide attempts under her belt and knowing that overdose is frequently the method of choice for women, my first thought was, "Great, yet another way of marginalizing the female demographic."

As I continued to ask questions, I learned at least part of the reasoning is that due to illicit Fentanyl, which hit the streets in 2005 (long after Rick's story), many of the overdoses weren't intentional suicides. But for me, all that does is scream even louder the obvious need to reach our Heroes before they get to such an incredibly low point that substance use of any kind feels like their only option.

Therefore, the ongoing focus of this podcast is to look at both the events that lead to the escalating loss of Hero life post service and also the horrible organizations I've encountered that are paid (sometimes multi-millions of dollars) to help our Heroes but instead use that money for their own personal gain and only make the problems worse.

I would beg your patience as I put this all together. It is a very big mission, and I'm an overachieving perfectionist who wants it to be right, enabling it to make the most impact. That being said, volunteers are always welcome.

S01E11 Marine Veteran Ray Lopez Founder of PTSD Bottles Part Two

Hero Harbor SpeaksBy Dawn KeeganSep 28, 2022