Iraq War veteran Dr. Timothy Vermillion discusses his harm reduction approach to veteran mental health, trauma therapy, PTSD treatment and suicide prevention.
As founder of the Paradise Institute, he explains how EMDR memory therapy helps veterans process combat trauma and move from surviving to thriving. Vermillion shares how quitting smoking is also effective in mental health treatment and veteran suicide prevention.
Other topics in this episode include Project Athena, a visual map connecting the memories of those who served in Afghanistan to their coordinates; and “Angel’s Glow,” and why it took almost 140 years to understand it.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
We're back alphas. We're coming in hot.
With inspiring guests, witty banter, and colorful commentary
for today's veterans and military community, this is the
Tal Podcast. Welcome, Alphas.
Thanks for joining us today. We'll be joined by Army veteran
doctor Timothy Vermillion, who is licensed clinical social
(00:20):
worker, who happens to be an Iraq War veteran and behavioral
health officer who served for 25years.
And he is the founder of the Paradise Institute, a veteran
owned practice dedicated to EMDRtherapy, advanced trauma
treatment and clinician training.
So we're in for a good chat today.
Joe, quick question, did you know that some old school
(00:43):
methods for treating well, I guess they called it shell
shock. That wasn't PTSD back in the
day, but modern day PTSD included electroshock therapy,
which is doesn't seem there's anything therapeutic about it.
But anyway, yeah, electroshock therapy, hydrotherapy, hypnosis
and forced activity. Can you imagine what?
(01:04):
You know, it's funny though, because now outside of
electroshock therapy, I've heardfor different types of people
and different types of trauma, different things work that that
don't that wouldn't work on others.
I mean, you know, hypnosis is isfamously hit or miss.
Hydrotherapy is is interesting and up until recently I knew
(01:28):
very little about that. What is forced activity?
It just it it says it sounds. OK, so it's like it's like in
getting it's like putting spiders on an arachnophobic.
I think that I, I, I think so just yeah, over activity.
I think they wanted to distract the mind.
(01:50):
Oh, OK. Or just forced exercise and
things like that. Interesting.
Yeah, the only one of those thatseems remotely therapeutic is
the hydrotherapy because hydrotherapy include included
immersion baths like cold water baths to slow the blood flow and
to decrease mental activity, which is interest an interesting
(02:12):
concept. Of course, this is well before
they had any sort of like scientific evidence showing that
work we're. Just seeing what sticks to the
wall stick. Them in cold water, let's see
what happens. And then they had they, they
would cover patients with wet sheets with the the idea this
(02:32):
was for extended periods of timewith the idea that it would
stimulate or soothe the patient whether they used hot wet sheets
or cold wet sheets. Nobody, nobody likes a cold wet
blanket. I'm just saying.
Well, that's why pee is hot. What that's?
Yeah, I know that's not the samething.
I just wanted to say something. Speaking of pee, shower
(02:52):
treatments were also a therapeutic.
We still use that. Don't act like you know,
sometimes sit in the shower and you go.
What? Even was today.
Like what? Was this hot shower?
It's a cold shower. Yeah, it's just the water
itself. I'm just surprised they didn't
mix electroshock and hydrotherapy together.
I feel like they would have beensuper effective.
I think those two don't mix. What do I know, I'm just a guy.
(03:17):
I think this is around the time people were using lobotomies as
well, but I don't using him on veterans.
But anyway, it's interesting to see how far mental health has
come for the veteran community, including the EMDR.
Which, listen, I, I am pretty open about my PTS diagnosis and
(03:37):
I've been through a number of different, like modality
treatments from general talk therapy, group therapy,
one-on-one. Oh my gosh.
The worst was prolonged exposuretherapy, which I will never
recommend to anybody. And I've done EMDR and what I
found is I generally like talk therapy with my favorite
(03:59):
counselor and my horses and my service dog.
I'll say though, that you are more introspective and you will
self correct and that type of therapy shines with Someone Like
You who is introspective and is always seeking to improve
themselves. And and I know someone that
immersive therapy sounds sounds crazy.
(04:22):
It's the only thing that snappedthem out of what they were going
through. So you know, again, you I guess
you just you never know. I feel like that one is probably
the biggest outside of maybe diving into like hardcore
psychedelics from being straightedge your whole life.
I feel like that's the biggest sort of toss up as to you know,
what you're going to get. I don't know, I, I hate that
(04:43):
that was a bad thing for you, but you know, I, I don't know,
I've been very blessed. I think to have had the time
that I had in the hospital to really cope through surrounded
by people who understood what I was going through.
It gave me a, a good process time that I think I needed.
So. It'll be interesting to throw
some of these questions out at our guest today.
(05:04):
I think so too. Alphas, please stick around.
We'll be back with Doctor Vermilion right after the break.
Hey there, Legionnaires and sports fans.
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(05:25):
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(06:09):
Navy game. Let's cheer on our team.
Support our mission. Show the world what it means to
be Legionnaire. Go Navy.
Today we are joined by Doctor Timothy Vermillion, who is a
clinical social worker specializing in trauma and
providing readjustment therapy for military and veteran
populations. Don't worry, we've got loads of
(06:30):
trauma to talk about, so we're going to have a fantastic talk.
But he's a service disabled veteran who served in Iraq with
the Army National Guard. Doctor Vermillion, welcome to
the Tal Podcast. Thank you.
I'm glad to be here. Glad to help out in any way I
can to get the the word out in regards to what benefits are
available and what treatments are available for trauma and
(06:50):
PTSD. Well, we're using you in lieu of
therapy, so no pressure. Yeah, not to put you on the hot
seat or anything. Can I?
Can I call you Doc? For sure Doc V is is a common.
V All right, we'll do it. OK.
So first of all, welcome to the show and thank you for your
service. I, I typically like to kick off
(07:11):
my questioning with a, a little bit of background, but I thought
I'd have some fun using your veteran positive event timeline
to jumpstart our debt. Is that OK?
Sure. All right.
So for many joining the military, it was the first time
(07:33):
they ever left home. Was this true for you?
Yes, in that extent, it was the first time that I left home for
any length of time. And I was 17.
So I went in young, had to get my parents permission, right.
And so, yeah, I, I went at 17 down the Fort Leonard Wood and
it was a very interesting experience for me, kind of an
(07:54):
awkward kid at the time, so. Were your were your parents in
the service? Both my parents were in the
Coast Guard. That's where they met.
My mother left the Coast Guard shortly after my older brother
was born and my father stayed infor many years later.
Wow, OK. And where did you enlist from at
17? I enlisted from, you know, it
(08:15):
was National Guard, so I enlisted from Sea Girt, NJ, went
to Fort Hamilton maps and that'swhere I enlisted from.
Cool. So another one of these veteran
positive event timeline questions was a follow on to
that. And that was what qualities do
you think you demonstrated in being able to leave home and
take on military training? Well, you know, there's always
(08:38):
reasons why people join the military, some for school, some
for Esprit de corps. I was joining in 98 and 98.
We didn't really have too much going on, right?
It was after the Gulf War and before the Iraq War started.
So with that in mind, there wasn't much going on.
So people weren't pushing as much to join the military for
(08:58):
the the warrior ethos. So it was a school thing mostly.
And it was initially anyway. And so there was independence
there, right? Because at that point I was in a
single, a single family household, a single parent
household. And I was thinking about money
and making sure that I could getto school and not put a burden
on my own family. So independence is the the big
(09:21):
one that I would think I would put forward there.
Did you have the same MOS throughout your your whole
military career or what? Or were you enlisted in an
officer? What was that transition?
Yeah. So I was 68.
Well, I was 91, Bravo 1st and then that was a medic.
And then they transferred it to a 68W, which is still a medic.
(09:42):
So I was a medic for the first 11-12 years of my career and
that was all enlisted. And then after I got back from
Iraq, about a year or two later,I finished, I'd finished
schooling and got my license andso I was direct commissioned.
So then I went to the dark side.So I went from E1 to E6 on the
enlisted side and then from O2 to O4 at this point.
(10:04):
Wow, that's awesome. OK.
And then my final of these questions that you have are,
what was it like for you to transition from the military to
civilian life? Well, it's in the National
Guard. It's a little bit different,
right? Because you know, we're, we're,
we're always in touch with our civilian life.
So it's a little bit different for, for that in that respect.
(10:26):
And technically I haven't reallytransitioned yet because I'm
still in. So I'm still awaiting that time
when I'm going to retire and step out completely.
And that seems to be coming sooner.
So I, you know, as that thought arises, it does create some
little hole in your chest, you know, some heavy, some, some
weight there as you're thinking about leaving after 26 years,
(10:47):
you know, in my 27th year now. So it's been a while.
Well. So first of all, I, I, you know,
again, I mean, I know we alreadygreeted you, but I do just want
to let you know how much it means to have you here.
We love talking to people that are, that are pushing to do
things for veterans, trying to find new ways to serve When you
(11:08):
get out, I think is, is many of our life goals.
And sometimes you don't realize that that's what you need until
you sort of fall into it. But so beyond clinical
treatment, you advocate for veteran coaching to help harness
service development qualities for, for civilian life.
And I think that's really interesting because I think that
you don't see that coaching is necessary when you're still sort
(11:33):
of in your head. When you first get out, you're
like, you know, I've got the whole world in front of me.
I'm motivated, dedicated. And, and then you get out and
there's just like you mentioned,you're, you know, you're, you're
at an age where as you're getting out, you can already
fill the hole. You know that there's going to
be something missing. I'd love for you to give me a
few of these service qualities like adaptability or precision
(11:54):
or my own personal fall back, learned perseverance through
repeated poor decision making. Coach.
You know that you can use to coach veterans and to
intentionally apply to civilian careers because there's a reason
why people want to hire veterans.
We bring something to the table that we don't even necessarily
see ourselves because it's in dated into our lives.
(12:15):
But I'd love to to, to ask you what type of qualities that you
think we should be promoting ourselves with, you know, to be
forward focused transitioning. Yeah, so definitely one of the
things that we need to recognizeis all the stuff that you've
come, you know, talking about the positive event timeline and
all that stuff that you've gone through has really given you
leadership, perseverance, commitment, like all of these
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qualities that once you leave the military and hit that wall,
like, OK, what do I do now? There's no one telling me what
to do. There's no schedule on the wall,
you know, there's really nothingthat's driving my my motivation
at this moment other than kind of to survive.
So some people, you know, they can still hear me.
Yes. All right.
Sorry about that. Yeah.
(12:58):
So some people end up having, you know, getting stuck, right?
They don't know what to do. So I do I international coaching
federation, the ICF coaching style, which is not as
directive. There's a lot of coaching out
there that is directive. Like here's the strict thing
that you need to do now, like, you know, make a resume.
What we do in ICF is more partner with the person, help
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them figure out what those positive qualities are that they
have, how to figure out what thepurpose is that they want to now
drive their intention toward. And then to help them create
those those pathways in order tomeet those goals and to get to
the position or the job or the degree that they want.
So that's what we're, that's what I'm here for in terms of
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the veteran coaching. Let can can I do a quick follow
up, Stacy, as a as a medic, as acorpsman myself, when I got
hurt, that desire to help veterans never went away and I
had to find a new way to do that.
Do you feel like this is something that has helped you
(14:02):
sort of hold on to that side of yourself that when you first
came in? What gave you fulfillment?
Do you feel like this is part ofthat still, or does it feel like
a brand new thing to you? No, I've been working with the
VA as well. And that's all I've been doing
is working with veterans and forveterans.
And as the, as the, as I tell well as an NCO and as an
officer, as I tell my peers, my subordinates, I'm like, listen,
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you know, we, we are here to serve the war fighter.
And so in my mind, I'm serving the war fighter both in the
service and out of the service. Heck, yeah.
All right. Thanks.
You know, I was going to talk toyou about post traumatic stress
and therapies, but I want to sort of preface my question with
(14:46):
a question to you about which both questions are to you, but
one more personal than the other.
As a combat veteran, do you haveare are you coping with your own
mental health struggles? Yeah, definitely.
I have my own stuff going on andI also reach out and have a a
(15:07):
therapist of my own. So I do think that getting care,
even as a therapist is important, helps you take care
of yourself so you can take careof others.
Have you found that when dealingwith your own issues, I don't
want to call them issues becausethat makes it sound so negative,
but you know, when dealing with your own experiences, is it
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difficult or more difficult to take on other people's burdens
when you're providing therapy for them or how is that?
Is that a challenge or like a personal workplace kind of
challenge? It can be right.
So we always have to self monitor.
We call that counter transference when it's not the
veteran making like you looking at you as you're as if you're
(15:54):
the the bad commander or something, which is
transference, right? Counter transference is now me
looking at them and treating them differently based on my
experiences. So we always have to monitor for
counter transference and make sure that I'm not doing that to
them. So again, therapy is important
for clinicians and sometimes when you go to school for
psychology, social work, etcetera, they make you go to
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therapy in order to kind of recognize what you're bringing
to the session so that you are monitoring your own counter
transference and trying to keep that out of the room.
So you're focusing directly on what the client needs and where
the client needs to go. That's interesting.
So I shouldn't go to school for this just to win arguments with
my wife? There are, there are.
It's helpful. OK, good.
(16:37):
So as I said, I've tried a number of different mental
health modalities, including eyemovement, desensitization and
reprocessing, which is EMDR. For all you alphas out there,
can you kind of breakdown what EMDR is or what the process is,
or EMDR for dummies? Let's do it that way.
(16:59):
Or for me. For those who haven't been
through it or are really interested to learn more about
who would qualify for it. Sure.
So it's a memory based therapy. So we'll kind of start there.
We look at your specific memories that are holding up the
issues that you're having today.So if you come with depression,
we'll say, OK, you know, what are the situations or the events
that bring up your depression today?
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And then we'll look at those situations and events and try to
find other memories that had similar thoughts, feelings,
physical sensations all the way down into your past.
And we do the same thing for PTSD.
So it's, it's anything that can can has a memory, a memory chain
associated with it, the EMDR canhelp with.
Now what we do with the memoriesis we desensitize them.
There's a bunch of different things that we can try to
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explain how this works, but the one that I like the most is the
working memory theory. So basically you bring up
something scary, right? Some memory that you have that
is still bringing up some activation in your body and
making your thoughts run. And then I'm going to do
something over here, distract you.
Your brain can't hold on to all that stress and be distracted at
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the same time. So when the memory gets
reconsolidated back into your neurons, back into your brain,
it doesn't have as much juice left.
But we keep doing that. And as we keep doing that, it
brings down the juice until there's no juice left.
And it's a 0. One of the metaphors that we use
is a 2 liter bottle of soda, right?
So right now, if you're coming in, you're all tense.
You're all a 2 liter bottle of soda.
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That's all tough and hard, right?
And shook up, right? All we do is crack it, crack it,
crack it, and all that steam goes out.
The memory is still there. However, how you experience the
memory is now different and that's the goal is to experience
the memory differently, have some adaptive resolution.
Usually after we desensitize thememory, the person can connect
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to positive things that have happened in their life and come
to some adaptive resolution, like I'm not a bad person or
something like that. I mean, there are, I've been
through other modalities where there's this sort of like
distinctive beginning, middle and end.
Does EMD, does EMDR work off that sort of timeline or what's
that like for most people? Yeah.
(19:05):
So the first thing that you do is you come in and do a regular
intake, but also part of that intake is going to be an EDR
target list basically. So we're again trying to find
the memories that we need to go to.
And that's the first phase of an8 phase program.
The second phase is doing the positive event timeline, right?
Or doing something in order to increase your access to the
(19:26):
adaptive material that makes theadaptive resolution something
that is easier to grasp for yourbrain because it's front loaded.
It's there. We also make sure at that point
that you have a way to state shift so that if you're upset,
you can relax, right? Or also we, we do tell you how
the process is going to go for the next couple phases.
Phases 3 through 6 are all just reprocessing phases, right?
(19:49):
They're all happen very quickly in a, in a session.
And then basically we, we close the session and re evaluate
which are the 7th and eighth phase of the of the, the
process. So it's 8 phases and we just go
1 memory after the other starting usually
chronologically, but not always chronologically from the
earliest memory in our list to the present memory.
(20:12):
And we also do some future templates for relapse
prevention. So you sort by size or last
modified. Sorry, just more thinking like
when you're going through the trauma is like I was thinking
like when you're going through your Dropbox trying to clean it
out, like do you get rid of the biggest stuff first that you
don't need or do you go after the this is wildly, I could
(20:36):
literally just sit down with youand buy you lunch and talk to
you for four hours about this specifically because it's
fascinating to me. So here I have a metaphor,
right? So we have the the Jenga tower.
And why I use this is because what we can say is like we, we
start out with the early memories, right?
Because these memories are the ones that feed up and tell us
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the rest of our experience. What is wrong with us?
I'm bad. This is what I learned when I
was a kid. And it it's going up, you know,
throughout the process. And you can even think about
somebody that you know, was a gunner and is blaming themselves
for not saving one of their buddies or the squad or
whatever. And then you talk to them and
it's like, well, you know, I've,I'm, I'm always a bad person or
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I never do anything, right? Right.
And that's because this piece down here is feeding up to that.
So if I worked on this piece andsaid, no, you know, you did your
job, right? You gotta also think about the
enemy. They, they they had a part in
this too. And they're like, yeah, you're
right. But all of a sudden this other
piece comes back up and says, yeah, but you don't do anything,
right? Right.
So this is just another example of that.
So if we start from the early memories at some point, and I'm
(21:42):
going to do this on purpose, butat some point if we keep
clearing out these memories, thewhole thing will collapse,
right? The whole memory network because
of generalization. So if you learn down here that
I'm a good person, then it's going to start to seep into all
the other memories and say like that underlines.
The negativity that you've been sort of tied to certain things
and events. How much are you finding that
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you have to go back into somebody's youth?
Because here's here's the thing,like, I'm sorry, I don't want to
cut you off, but you know, childhood traumas affect us all.
Is is that the kind of concept? We usually look for one, right?
Doesn't mean we're going to start there.
Depending on how much time we have for the client, sometimes
we don't have all the time in the world.
So for the VA, for example, sometimes we have 10 sessions or
(22:24):
12 sessions. So we might start with the
memory that we know based on ourconversation with the veteran,
that is the one that before it they were OK, yeah, sure, there
was bad stuff, but after it is when they were really
symptomatic. So we might start with that
memory instead of going chronologically to see if we can
reduce the temperature. And then if we have time, then
we can start going back and working our way up.
(22:45):
I see. You're like speaking my language
here. You're very clinical about
something that I'm very passionate about.
And you know, I, I want your insight and maybe some ways we
can encourage those that have isolated themselves to realize
that that they need help and then to maybe seek it.
But I think realizing they need help is is step one.
(23:06):
Yeah, and I get minimization allthe time.
I get the, the other side of, you know, my, my experience was
worse than yours, right? So I get people coming to me and
be like, I shouldn't even be here.
You, you have other people that you need to see, right?
So what you went through, whatever it might be, how bad it
might have been, if it hurt you,that's all that matters, right?
Doesn't matter how it affected somebody else or what happens to
(23:28):
other people. I'm here with you.
I need to work with you to get to you where you need to be the
best person that you can be. And we have therapy, right, to
deal with some of the trauma stuff.
And what we're also talking about here is the, the chronic
pain aspect of things where we have acute pain, right, which is
the flesh wounds. And you have the chronic pain
that is also affected by those negative thoughts, like I won't
(23:50):
be able to do this anymore. You know, people won't love me
anymore. You know, I'm, I'm physically
different. I can't participate in mountain
climbing with my friends anymore, you know, whatever it
might be. So that there's that stuff that
we think about that also makes the actual pain feel worse or
the experience of pain worse. So all of these things have, can
go into an ecosystem. And that's one of those things
(24:11):
that I'm, I'm imagining as far as my, my little business model
here, you know, it's like. A mind map.
Exactly. You know, look at clinical
stuff, how do I help them deal with the, the issues, right as,
as we call them, the you know, the, the problems And then how
to coach them from coming out, you know, expecting something to
be different, as you were sayinga moment ago, you know, coming
(24:33):
out and not having taken the time they needed to heal.
How do I get them from where they are to again, finding that
new purpose when they might not be able to be that police
officer anymore because of something physical or mental,
Right? What what can we do and how do
we get there? And what qualities do you bring
to to that position or or your your goal?
(24:56):
I wanted to fix. The.
Question you asked though, Joe, like Docfi, do you have any
recommendations for loved ones of a veteran who are who is
struggling, that doesn't or isn't ready to recognize within
themselves that they need help? How can they approach them in a
thoughtful way to to encourage them, arouse them to get
support? Yeah, that's a tough one. the VA
(25:17):
does have a, a coaching into care program, right?
So that they, they have a caregiver program that you can
call in and, and get some ideas and thoughts with and they'll,
they'll guide you through it a little bit.
But as far as what, what I wouldsay to them is, you know, be
patient and don't, don't be afraid of the tough
conversations. You know, it's how you have
(25:38):
those tough conversations, but don't be afraid of them.
You know, we don't want to attack.
We don't want to make somebody feel belittled or minimized, but
at the same time, you need to have a sit down and be like, you
know what, what's happening here?
You know, I'm I'm sure it's not what you expected at your life
to be and there might be a better way.
And you know, how do we get you there?
I for me, what, what my biggest wake up call was, was knowing
(26:01):
the effect it had on the people around me.
And, and so I, I think that that's something like you said,
be patient, be willing to have those conversations, but not,
you know, accusatory, but more just if you don't have a
purpose, you're going to flounder and you're going to
flail and you're going to flap your arms and people are going
to get hit around you. So yeah, thank you so much.
(26:22):
I think purpose is the, the, thebiggest thing, right, is
identifying, you know, kind of healing the purpose that you
had, right? And then finding a, a new
purpose or strengthening the onethat you, you that was reduced
over time, you know, whatever itmight be.
But purpose is a huge thing. And if we can install that, I
think we can actually save lives.
Yeah. Do you, for those who maybe
(26:46):
don't know what the clinical signs are of somebody who may be
on a mental on the path to a mental breakdown or you know, on
the edge of suicide, are there any sort of signs or unhealthy
coping mechanisms that or early signs that people could look out
for with the veteran in their life that would maybe cue them
in? Yeah, I mean, the biggest one
(27:08):
is, is, is threatening. You know, you say something,
don't think it's a joke, you know, actually confront it.
Don't laugh it off. If somebody says anything,
giving away stuff, right, and they're trying to close up the
shop, you know, for their life, you know that they people do
that, you know, they just start to give away things and make
sure that they're things are in order so that when they pass,
the next person doesn't have to deal with as much.
(27:31):
And then we have the isolation. I think I might have said that,
but isolation is huge, right? People just stop talking to
people. And that is a big one.
But the biggest thing that you'll find with most suicides,
especially is intoxication, you know, alcoholism, you know,
lessons, inhibitions. And when you talk to somebody,
usually it has something to do with that, you know, that they
(27:52):
they were on or consuming alcohol at the time or something
on those lines. So those are, are some big
things that you want to look at.And then of course, if they've
tried to in the past, right, especially in those like first
like 3 months afterwards, we would probably consider them a
much higher risk of doing it again.
So if they came out of the hospital, a good risk of, you
(28:12):
know, keep an eye on them because it's a better chance as
they start to feel better to getthat energy to actually do
something. Alphas, I want you to go ahead
and check out Paradise institute.com.
We're going to have that websitein our show notes.
That's where you're going to talk to find Doctor V and some
of the programs he offers and some of the like when I opened
(28:35):
up with those questions that these are things that he
developed and it's absolutely a wonderful tool.
You'll also learn more about EMDR and programs that are out
there that that may be able to support you or the veteran in
your life that needs support. While there, don't forget to
follow Doc VS social media handles.
They're right there at the very bottom of the page.
(28:55):
I've I've went and trolled him and I've already followed him.
He doesn't know it yet, but he'sgot a secret stalker.
But anyway, we'll have that website and the socials in our
show notes. Doctor V, Before we as we wrap
up and wind down, is there anything that we haven't
discussed that you think Alpha, the alphas need to hear?
Yeah. And this is, you know, a tough
(29:16):
one because it's like a hard turn.
One of the things that I do workwith people on is harm
reduction, right? And then we haven't talked about
substance abuse at all, except for the alcohol piece.
But in terms of what kills people, what kills veterans, we
have, we talked about suicide. You know, suicide kills how
many, Like 17 up to 20, you know, whatever the number is
now. But I know it's 17 or higher
(29:37):
people a day, right? And that's preventable.
If we look at smoking cigarettes, it's about 60 people
a day, right? We don't talk about it.
We don't, it's not a big thing. But in terms of veterans, we're
talking about about 60 people. And how I got that was taking,
you know, the 6% veteran population from the 480,000
people that passed and knowing full well that veterans and
(30:00):
military smoke at more a higher rate than the rest of the
population. And we have one metric that I
know, you know, works well, 7000veterans a year come down with
lung cancer alone, right? And 80 plus or minus percent of
that is due to smoking. Nicotine has has, has some great
qualities, right? Nicotine isn't the problem, it's
(30:22):
the combustible smoking. So the first harm reduction
method that we can do is get people off of the cigarettes,
onto vaping, onto pouches or, you know, some other nicotine
replacement therapy that is not going to literally kill them
over time. Well that's interesting.
There are more smoking specification classes that you
can go to with your VA, right? Yeah, they have tons of stuff on
(30:46):
there right now. They're not up to snuff in terms
of the the vaping piece. But more and more research comes
out and says that this is one ofthe best ways to transition from
smoking because for especially for veterans that have the the
hip when they breathe in or using the the hand to mouth
action. All of these things kind of go
(31:07):
into the the reason why using a vape is easier than maybe
chewing gum or something. It's like edible crayons would
be good for marines. Something that's still.
Seriously, I, I do remember one last thing, Doctor V is when I
was downrange, we, we had been in a pretty serious firefight
and we lost a few guys. And when we came back to the
FoB, I, I think he was the psychology, but the head Dr. met
(31:34):
the units and he was walking around.
He's like encouraging us to smoke.
He's like, don't, don't even tryto quit right now.
It's too stressful. Like I don't think that's what
people really should be hearing.But anyway, now's the time if
you're still smoking and now's the time to try it.
I know it's really hard as as a former smoker, it's a challenge,
(31:55):
but it can be done. And I thank you for bringing
that up. Appreciate that.
I I totally would have started smoking if somebody didn't and
say, oh, you'll start smoking when you get over there.
I'm just petty. So I was like, OK, now I won't.
Thanks for the heads up like. All right.
Well, Doctor V, we really appreciate you and your time and
all that you're doing for the veteran community and, and
(32:17):
spreading the word on these goodthings and, and EMDR and thank
you for joining us today. And and of course, again, thank
you for your service. Thank you.
Anytime you know you need me to come back, I'll come back.
Yeah, absolutely. It's fantastic conversation.
I do appreciate you. Thank you.
All right, Alpha, stick around for some scuttlebutt after the
break. Hi, my name is Bill Clancy.
(32:40):
I'm the national commander of the Sons of the American Legion.
I'm thrilled that the American Legion family has created the
USA 250 Challenge during my yearas National Commander of the
Sons of the American. Legion.
I've made a personal goal to complete the challenge.
Not one category, not 2, all three categories.
But today I want to talk to you about Physical Activity
(33:03):
challenge. You don't have to.
Run or ride a bike or do anything strenuous.
You can if you want to, of course, but the beauty of the
USA 250 Challenge is that anything fitness related counts.
You can play pickleball, you canwalk the door, you can do chair
yoga. Whatever you choose to do, be
sure to join the challenge. Visit legion.org/USA 2:50 to get
(33:27):
started. Welcome back, Alphas, we hope
you had a great break. Now it's time for some
scuttlebutt, Joe. Oh my goodness, Stacy, thank you
for bringing that up. I love scuttlebutt.
For a generation that lived the war in Afghanistan one grid
square at a time, the war now feels like a series of dots on a
(33:49):
map. A patrol base carved out of a
hard pan soil, a culvert on a highway that never felt safe.
A Ridge where the radio went quiet.
We all had our our names for different places.
We had a a spot that we started out calling the chicken run that
by the time we got to the end ofthe deployment was the most
dangerous run. It used to be where you went
when you were when things got a little crazy up top, you would
(34:11):
take these back roads and the chicken run became the the
chicken run because everybody was scared on it.
But Nathan Keller knows the pullof those dots.
When he and a group of fellow veterans wanted to record the
war they experienced, they knew all their stories would be
easiest to see laid out on a map.
This is such a cool concept, andI cannot believe that in the age
(34:31):
of technology and the ease at which we can do things like this
that this hasn't been done yet. But they launched a project
called Project Athena, a visual map connecting the memories of
soldiers to the coordinates where they occurred.
War is chaotic, and when you're a soldier on the ground, you
rarely see the full picture, said Keller.
And So what they did is they they took these memories,
(34:55):
photos, names, notes, they gathered them all together and
they put them on a map, adding the memories of others and you
and they can fill out a full sort of overall picture of the
war, which is the coolest thing.It's almost like everybody
jumped on Google Maps and play it on Google Maps when it first
dropped. Anybody who deployed went
(35:17):
through the streets of Fallujah on Google, Google Maps as soon
as you could. It was just such a a cool thing.
And this right here personalizesthat towards veterans.
So Keller is a Canadian and served as an armored
reconnaissance soldier with the Royal Canadian Dragoons.
And I'll see they then as a geotech with two combat engineer
(35:37):
regiments, the military's map makers.
He deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 in the Panjwahi.
Do you know how to say that better than I do?
You were. You're laughing at me so I'm
guessing I butchered it. You're fine, go for it.
Pinch Wahi, just come on, fill me out here.
(35:59):
Pinch Wahi district any love with memories that were specific
and unfinished. When he remembers the war,
there's one day and one grid coordinate that stands out for
him. I spent 15 years wondering what
the hell happened that day, Keller said as his unit
patrolled near the town of Kalgor, outside of the town of
Salavat. They were hit and by a
(36:21):
coordinated IED attack. One vehicle after another
exploded as the mission turned to the fog of detonations and
confusion. So before Project Athena
launched, he added photos and details of the engagement to the
map. 3 days after the project went live, a second entry
appeared. An engineer uploaded a photo and
a short account, one Kaler had never seen before.
(36:43):
The missing piece snapped into place.
That day was one of the those moments that stayed with me for
years because I never fully understood what happened.
Gosh, Keller, I've been there. Seeing it on the map with
someone else's account from the same operation finally connected
the dots. It turned a fragmented memory
into something I could understand.
And there is real value in that.Joe, there's an interesting
(37:05):
concept. After President Lincoln was
shot, they interviewed pretty much everybody that was in the
the theater. I never.
Thought you were that old. I know I was there and you know.
It's I'm so sorry. Go ahead.
So they all had different accounts and different
perspectives, but they called, you know, they it's called the
(37:26):
fog of war that everybody under records things in their mind
differently. So this does not surprise me.
Carry on. I, I think that's really
interesting and, and I'll give you a very short example of my
own. For me, Fallujah was very small
in my mind. You know, the streets that we
walked down. I knew those streets, even
though even the ones that I walked down once I, I could tell
(37:47):
you the color of the buildings, I could tell you how high they
were, because while the Marines were looking everywhere, I
focused on the rooftops. I just for some reason that was
where, where my mind kept going and, and having read accounts of
some of the scout snipers and people that were doing Overwatch
in a weird sort of way, it made my war feel very small.
(38:10):
And I don't, I don't think that's a bad thing.
I think that sometimes you buildthings up in your head and it's
OK to let it be something that'sjust a part of your life.
Because when you build it up into something even bigger than
a big thing that it already is, it, it tends to over shadow
other things. And I don't think that that's
good for your, you know, your mental health.
But from the start, Athena leaned on open data and
(38:32):
community input. Tactical infrastructure like
COPS and control bases begin with the US Marine made data
set. It was done in crayon and they
were able to transfer it into something digital.
Everything else. I could just see a bunch of
marines sticking around with their crayons like where's?
My brother, stop using all the red Wilson.
(38:55):
Everything else grows from veterans uploading photos,
including fuzzy dates if exact ones are gone, dropping pins
where an OP once stood and writing the short plane captions
that makes sense to the people who are there.
Curation is the hard part with any crowd sourced history.
The project has a moderation queue that reveals that reviews
all submissions in a process that allows users to report
entries they believe are false or have bad coordinates.
(39:17):
But Keller trust the veteran network to keep it honest.
It is a small world and people will call out what does not pass
the smell test. The goal is not to referee every
sentence. It is to keep the map useful and
fair and let honest memories stack into something bigger than
one's tour version of events. The reactions have been the
(39:40):
proof veterans like having a place to park their story that
is not a social feed that disappears by the morning.
Families in the hall and have asked for more details than they
were ever given at the time, notout of morbid curiosity, but to
finally understand what happenedand where.
Keller approached those conversations carefully and
found that clarity helps. They want to know that place.
(40:02):
It gives them a measure of closure, he said.
So though Athena began as a project among Canadian vets,
close to 1/4 of visitors now come from the United States.
Submissions by American veteransare still just a fraction of the
system. But Killer hopes that will
change and American troops will begin to catalog their own
photos and memories. There is loads.
There's so much. And and if they do that, there's
(40:26):
going to be a better timeline ofthis war done from people that
didn't write history books. It's going to be ground troops,
people that were really there. And there's, I don't believe
outside of finding something like a diet, you know, the
Diaries from World War 2, that you're ever going to get
something quite like this. Because I think, I hope that war
has changed in a way that in thenext decade or so that that
(40:48):
these types of of battles, you know, no longer happen.
You know, our allies from say, Poland or the UK or, you know,
wherever also start weighing in on this would be interesting.
Their perspectives are always very interesting.
Australia, the war was shared byso many nations, like I just
said, but this should reflect that, he said.
(41:11):
There is a quiet urgency to the work.
Afghanistan veterans are still yelling on paper, but the
details fade fast. Hard drives fail.
Phones get upgraded. Coordinates blur.
Whatever our politics, citizens elect leaders who make decisions
that affect those who serve, Keller said.
If you want to understand what that means, go look.
There are IDs and gunfights and months of living behind sandbag
(41:34):
walls. Even if you were not physically
wounded, very few people came back without some kind of mental
injury. Keller said he laughed at how
invincible 23 felt. We still don't know it and how
40 looks back at with the bettereyes.
And of course, hindsight is always 2020, you guys.
Yeah, You know, this may not be the place for this, but I just
(41:59):
very recently, I realized that Iused to be able to look back at
everything that I went through at the age that I was and still
feel like I was that person. And when I felt like I was that
person, I could sit in this sortof defensive confidence of
knowing that I did the best I could and it just was what it
was. I'm at a point now where I'm
(42:20):
past that, where I can look backand see the kid that was over
there. And pity is the wrong word.
But I heard for him, he was a kid.
We were all kids. I go through the pictures
sometimes, and these men that I served with that that didn't
make it, have grown in my mind. I see them for some reason as as
40 year old men, 45 year old menwith families and things like
(42:43):
that. And it's such a sobering kick in
the gut when I go through those pictures and I realize we were
children. And I don't mean children.
I don't mean to undermine who wewere.
I'm just saying to see that we were such, so young.
Yeah. To have gone through everything.
I mean, the friends, the friendsI lost that were killed are the,
the same age as my, my stepson is now.
(43:04):
So that's, you know, that puts alot of things in perspective.
It's just, it's crazy. I think that that he's got a
good point in saying, though, that maybe the best argument for
Project Athena is the smallest one.
Most of us, like myself, I'm notwriting my story down.
There's music, but my, anything that I write is an escape.
You know, I, I write science fiction and fantasy.
(43:26):
I don't, I don't want to write my story down like that.
I don't enjoy sitting in it longenough that it would take for me
to write that stuff down. But we have regular stories that
matter to us and the people who love us.
A photo of a plywood hooch that leaked when it rained.
A broken culvert marker that kept you up at night the day
your convoy turned around because a mind plow hit another
(43:46):
device. And then the next vehicle did
too, and the whole plan fell apart.
On their own, these notes feel minor.
Together, across the country, wewill never fully understand.
They look a lot like truth. You can visit Project Athena to
make an account and upload your own stories and photos.
We've got a link in the show notes.
Thanks for finding this story, Joe, and you can find the full
(44:08):
story on Task and Purpose. We'll have that link also in our
show notes. So here's another story we've
got for you. In April 1862, the Battle of
Shiloh became one of the bloodiest clashes of the
American Civil War. There were an estimated 23,746
casualties over a 2 day battle. That is unfathomable.
(44:29):
I can't even say that word. I mean that number's huge.
On the Union side, 1754 men werekilled and 80, four, 8408 were
wounded. The Confederate suffered similar
losses with 1728 killed and 8012wounded with and these are all,
these are American citizens regardless of what it was.
(44:50):
I mean, these were Americans fighting Americans that that's
crazy. It just seems so senseless with
the field medicine still primitive.
Let me just back up and say, listen, the morality of the war
was definitely on point. It just seems like a conflict
like this. I don't know loss is lost but.
(45:13):
No, I I get what you're saying. It's not that it wasn't an
atrocity that needed to be corrected at at almost any cost,
but the cost was complete. It feels like there had to have
been another way. It feels like there was a group
of people that were just unwilling to give just a little
bit, just enough for our for, for something like this to not
(45:34):
have happened. And I wonder what they would say
in retrospect and honesty as to if they accept the
responsibility for having pushedit this far.
Well, it was just pure. It was pure greed.
No, but no woman should own another human money on the backs
of anybody else. That's it's just.
(45:55):
Anyway, war sucks. With field medicine still
primitive during the early days of the war, and germ theory
still a relatively new concept, hundreds of wounded men were
left to wait for aid in the rainor mud on in the battlefield.
However, a day turned into night.
Shockingly, some of the surviving wounded began to glow
in a greenish blue hue. Moreover, doctors and medical
(46:18):
personnel later reported that those that were glowing wound,
had glowing wounds, had lower infection rates and healed much
more quickly than those without them.
So the otherworldly phenomenon was quickly dubbed the Angels
Glow by soldiers for its seemingly healing properties.
It would take 139 years. You remember this, Stacy.
(46:39):
I do, however, to apparently unravel the mystery surrounding
the glow. In the back of my mind I'm like
serenading this, this whole glowwith just let your soul glow.
That's fantastic. Do you want to pull the lyrics
up and run through it right quick?
Oh. So silky smooth, let it shine
(47:02):
through. Yes, yes, sing it, Queen.
In 2001, high school students Bill Martin and Jonathan Curtis
at Bowie High School in Bowie, MD, worked with Martin's mother,
Agricultural Research Service microbiologist Phyllis Martin.
I again, I want to see these business cards.
(47:24):
Hi. I'm Martin's mother,
Agricultural Research Service microbiologist Phyllis Martin,
to root out its source. According to the Agricultural
Department, she had previously studied the bacterium.
Oh, Lord Almighty. All right.
Here we go. Fotorhabdos luminescence, but
(47:44):
not too bad. Fotorhabdos luminescence.
OK, sorry, that looked way scarier on paper as a potential
biocontrol agent and knew that this insect pathogen created a
glowing effect. The students found that the
photo Oh my gosh, now I have to say it.
Photo Raidless Photo Rabdous Photo Rabdous Photo Rabdous.
(48:07):
I'm going to have to say that a dozen times.
The students found that the photo Rabdous strains produced
antibiotics that inhibited the growth of other bacteria that
would have caused infections in the wounds, thus aiding in the
soldiers healing. It was known that the glow It
was known that the glowing bacteria live in the guts of the
nematodes, a small parasitic worm.
(48:28):
Geez, who had worms? Everybody had worms they were
in. The mud.
And we found that these nematodes are attracted to small
insects that would have been in the guts and clothing of the
soldiers and the worms would have excreted glowing bacteria.
Gosh, I'm sorry, I'm getting gaggy on that.
(48:50):
Excuse me you guys, You want to pass around those worms that I
need them for my glowing gluts? Throw up in my mouth.
The the excreted glowing bacteria, the excrement of the
glowing, the glow worms. The excreted glowing bacteria
from the parasitic nematode released chemicals that ate away
at serious bacteria infections such as gangrene.
(49:12):
I know that one. The cold and what conditions
after the battle likely made it a perfect hosting conditions for
the worm and bacteria and likelyhelped the soldiers live through
the night. That's pretty crazy.
That is wild and I'm curious what we use in lieu.
I mean, obviously we don't want to use worm excrement for
everything, you know, but I'm curious.
(49:33):
There has to be something that they use.
Dude, weren't you a combat medic?
Yeah, I'm saying though, like, but, but we don't have access
to, you know, we don't clean anything out.
There wouldn't you be in the sphere of knowing what the hell
they used on the battlefield? Oh, no, no, I'm not talking on
the but well, they didn't even use it.
It used them. These worms were like food.
(49:53):
But no, I'm just saying like in hospitals and things like that,
it seems. It seems odd that this isn't I'm
I'm wondering since this isn't probably, you know, utilized in
hospitals, I'm wondering what I was greenside.
They didn't teach me anything like that.
They were like, you know, spit on it and rub the dirt and blood
out and then. Take.
It up, yeah, some Robitussin on it we saw carried around bottles
(50:16):
of robe. So, Melissa Awin, director of
marketing and communications at the National Museum of Civil War
Medicine in Frederick, MD, told Military Times Angel's glow was
a true phenomenon. Phenomenon and one of those
stories about Civil War medicineand soldiers that they hear
questions about often, especially around Halloween.
(50:39):
What's exciting about the story for us, Wynn said, is the modern
interest in determining why it'sgenuinely part of the mission to
use artifacts, storytelling in the historic lessons derived
from that era to educate the public and define the impact on
today's society. We continue to learn from and
benefit from Civil War medicine,and this story highlights how
curiosity about the unique phenomenon has impacted medical
(51:02):
study in the 21st century. Could you imagine the project
that they knew from this battle?People glowed here.
What? Joe, I think we'll know what
your Halloween costume should benext year.
Oh. What's?
Up can you please wear a like like a battle worn Union soldier
(51:22):
uniform and with the RIP with your leg ripped off and put some
of that like glowy chemical on it and then just say you're
Angel touched. Dude I am here for that.
Plus my wife's name is Angel butalso.
But you know. That would be such a deep cut,
so. Much better.
(51:43):
That would be such a deep cut. The four people that got it
would be like, This is the finest example of Halloween
costume that's ever existed. And everyone else would just be
like, what do you like a alien? Education and science, like
you're hitting it on so many loves.
It's a chance to it's a chance to educate.
(52:04):
I legitimately love high effort for for very specific audience.
You know what I'm saying? Like I really love, I love
putting work in. So this is something that that
we can talk about. An actor nerd.
That's going to be like, I know exactly what that is.
Yeah, and then they try to correct me.
It was actually more of a cyan. Okay buddy, just chill.
(52:27):
Alphas, we're going to have thatMilitary Times article in our
show. Not so be sure to check it out,
Check it, check it out also. Thanks.
For listening. Don't forget that we we are now
hosted on Spotify. You can find both audio and
video versions of the podcast. Subscribe to our podcast and
rate our broadcast. Give us all the stars and the
comments and the the good cheer.We only want the positives.
(52:49):
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All the best podcasts are hosts hosted and that's us.
So subscribe to our newsletter and send us mail and guest
recommendations at legion.org. Back slash Tal.
Hey y'all, we'll see you next week.
Bye. Bye.
We're back alphas. We're coming in hot.
With inspiring guests, witty banter, and colorful commentary
for today's veterans and military community, this is the
Tal Podcast. Welcome, Alphas.
Thanks for joining us today. We'll be joined by Army veteran
doctor Timothy Vermillion, who is licensed clinical social
(00:20):
worker, who happens to be an Iraq War veteran and behavioral
health officer who served for 25years.
And he is the founder of the Paradise Institute, a veteran
owned practice dedicated to EMDRtherapy, advanced trauma
treatment and clinician training.
So we're in for a good chat today.
Joe, quick question, did you know that some old school
(00:43):
methods for treating well, I guess they called it shell
shock. That wasn't PTSD back in the
day, but modern day PTSD included electroshock therapy,
which is doesn't seem there's anything therapeutic about it.
But anyway, yeah, electroshock therapy, hydrotherapy, hypnosis
and forced activity. Can you imagine what?
(01:04):
You know, it's funny though, because now outside of
electroshock therapy, I've heardfor different types of people
and different types of trauma, different things work that that
don't that wouldn't work on others.
I mean, you know, hypnosis is isfamously hit or miss.
Hydrotherapy is is interesting and up until recently I knew
(01:28):
very little about that. What is forced activity?
It just it it says it sounds. OK, so it's like it's like in
getting it's like putting spiders on an arachnophobic.
I think that I, I, I think so just yeah, over activity.
I think they wanted to distract the mind.
(01:50):
Oh, OK. Or just forced exercise and
things like that. Interesting.
Yeah, the only one of those thatseems remotely therapeutic is
the hydrotherapy because hydrotherapy include included
immersion baths like cold water baths to slow the blood flow and
to decrease mental activity, which is interest an interesting
(02:12):
concept. Of course, this is well before
they had any sort of like scientific evidence showing that
work we're. Just seeing what sticks to the
wall stick. Them in cold water, let's see
what happens. And then they had they, they
would cover patients with wet sheets with the the idea this
(02:32):
was for extended periods of timewith the idea that it would
stimulate or soothe the patient whether they used hot wet sheets
or cold wet sheets. Nobody, nobody likes a cold wet
blanket. I'm just saying.
Well, that's why pee is hot. What that's?
Yeah, I know that's not the samething.
I just wanted to say something. Speaking of pee, shower
(02:52):
treatments were also a therapeutic.
We still use that. Don't act like you know,
sometimes sit in the shower and you go.
What? Even was today.
Like what? Was this hot shower?
It's a cold shower. Yeah, it's just the water
itself. I'm just surprised they didn't
mix electroshock and hydrotherapy together.
I feel like they would have beensuper effective.
I think those two don't mix. What do I know, I'm just a guy.
(03:17):
I think this is around the time people were using lobotomies as
well, but I don't using him on veterans.
But anyway, it's interesting to see how far mental health has
come for the veteran community, including the EMDR.
Which, listen, I, I am pretty open about my PTS diagnosis and
(03:37):
I've been through a number of different, like modality
treatments from general talk therapy, group therapy,
one-on-one. Oh my gosh.
The worst was prolonged exposuretherapy, which I will never
recommend to anybody. And I've done EMDR and what I
found is I generally like talk therapy with my favorite
(03:59):
counselor and my horses and my service dog.
I'll say though, that you are more introspective and you will
self correct and that type of therapy shines with Someone Like
You who is introspective and is always seeking to improve
themselves. And and I know someone that
immersive therapy sounds sounds crazy.
(04:22):
It's the only thing that snappedthem out of what they were going
through. So you know, again, you I guess
you just you never know. I feel like that one is probably
the biggest outside of maybe diving into like hardcore
psychedelics from being straightedge your whole life.
I feel like that's the biggest sort of toss up as to you know,
what you're going to get. I don't know, I, I hate that
(04:43):
that was a bad thing for you, but you know, I, I don't know,
I've been very blessed. I think to have had the time
that I had in the hospital to really cope through surrounded
by people who understood what I was going through.
It gave me a, a good process time that I think I needed.
So. It'll be interesting to throw
some of these questions out at our guest today.
(05:04):
I think so too. Alphas, please stick around.
We'll be back with Doctor Vermilion right after the break.
Hey there, Legionnaires and sports fans.
This is Joe Worley, American Legion member and Navy Veteran,
and I am so excited that the American Legion is continuing
their tradition of support for the Army Navy Game presented by
(05:25):
USAA, the first veteran service organization to sponsor
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That's right, the greatest rivalry in sports just got even
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We're honored to stand behind the incredible student athletes
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(05:47):
And through this sponsorship, we're shining a spotlight on our
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Tune into CBS on December 13th at 3:00 PM Eastern to watch Navy
take on Army in this epic showdown.
To learn more about the AmericanLegions involvement and our
mission, visit legion.org. back slash Army.
(06:09):
Navy game. Let's cheer on our team.
Support our mission. Show the world what it means to
be Legionnaire. Go Navy.
Today we are joined by Doctor Timothy Vermillion, who is a
clinical social worker specializing in trauma and
providing readjustment therapy for military and veteran
populations. Don't worry, we've got loads of
(06:30):
trauma to talk about, so we're going to have a fantastic talk.
But he's a service disabled veteran who served in Iraq with
the Army National Guard. Doctor Vermillion, welcome to
the Tal Podcast. Thank you.
I'm glad to be here. Glad to help out in any way I
can to get the the word out in regards to what benefits are
available and what treatments are available for trauma and
(06:50):
PTSD. Well, we're using you in lieu of
therapy, so no pressure. Yeah, not to put you on the hot
seat or anything. Can I?
Can I call you Doc? For sure Doc V is is a common.
V All right, we'll do it. OK.
So first of all, welcome to the show and thank you for your
service. I, I typically like to kick off
(07:11):
my questioning with a, a little bit of background, but I thought
I'd have some fun using your veteran positive event timeline
to jumpstart our debt. Is that OK?
Sure. All right.
So for many joining the military, it was the first time
(07:33):
they ever left home. Was this true for you?
Yes, in that extent, it was the first time that I left home for
any length of time. And I was 17.
So I went in young, had to get my parents permission, right.
And so, yeah, I, I went at 17 down the Fort Leonard Wood and
it was a very interesting experience for me, kind of an
(07:54):
awkward kid at the time, so. Were your were your parents in
the service? Both my parents were in the
Coast Guard. That's where they met.
My mother left the Coast Guard shortly after my older brother
was born and my father stayed infor many years later.
Wow, OK. And where did you enlist from at
17? I enlisted from, you know, it
(08:15):
was National Guard, so I enlisted from Sea Girt, NJ, went
to Fort Hamilton maps and that'swhere I enlisted from.
Cool. So another one of these veteran
positive event timeline questions was a follow on to
that. And that was what qualities do
you think you demonstrated in being able to leave home and
take on military training? Well, you know, there's always
(08:38):
reasons why people join the military, some for school, some
for Esprit de corps. I was joining in 98 and 98.
We didn't really have too much going on, right?
It was after the Gulf War and before the Iraq War started.
So with that in mind, there wasn't much going on.
So people weren't pushing as much to join the military for
(08:58):
the the warrior ethos. So it was a school thing mostly.
And it was initially anyway. And so there was independence
there, right? Because at that point I was in a
single, a single family household, a single parent
household. And I was thinking about money
and making sure that I could getto school and not put a burden
on my own family. So independence is the the big
(09:21):
one that I would think I would put forward there.
Did you have the same MOS throughout your your whole
military career or what? Or were you enlisted in an
officer? What was that transition?
Yeah. So I was 68.
Well, I was 91, Bravo 1st and then that was a medic.
And then they transferred it to a 68W, which is still a medic.
(09:42):
So I was a medic for the first 11-12 years of my career and
that was all enlisted. And then after I got back from
Iraq, about a year or two later,I finished, I'd finished
schooling and got my license andso I was direct commissioned.
So then I went to the dark side.So I went from E1 to E6 on the
enlisted side and then from O2 to O4 at this point.
(10:04):
Wow, that's awesome. OK.
And then my final of these questions that you have are,
what was it like for you to transition from the military to
civilian life? Well, it's in the National
Guard. It's a little bit different,
right? Because you know, we're, we're,
we're always in touch with our civilian life.
So it's a little bit different for, for that in that respect.
(10:26):
And technically I haven't reallytransitioned yet because I'm
still in. So I'm still awaiting that time
when I'm going to retire and step out completely.
And that seems to be coming sooner.
So I, you know, as that thought arises, it does create some
little hole in your chest, you know, some heavy, some, some
weight there as you're thinking about leaving after 26 years,
(10:47):
you know, in my 27th year now. So it's been a while.
Well. So first of all, I, I, you know,
again, I mean, I know we alreadygreeted you, but I do just want
to let you know how much it means to have you here.
We love talking to people that are, that are pushing to do
things for veterans, trying to find new ways to serve When you
(11:08):
get out, I think is, is many of our life goals.
And sometimes you don't realize that that's what you need until
you sort of fall into it. But so beyond clinical
treatment, you advocate for veteran coaching to help harness
service development qualities for, for civilian life.
And I think that's really interesting because I think that
you don't see that coaching is necessary when you're still sort
(11:33):
of in your head. When you first get out, you're
like, you know, I've got the whole world in front of me.
I'm motivated, dedicated. And, and then you get out and
there's just like you mentioned,you're, you know, you're, you're
at an age where as you're getting out, you can already
fill the hole. You know that there's going to
be something missing. I'd love for you to give me a
few of these service qualities like adaptability or precision
(11:54):
or my own personal fall back, learned perseverance through
repeated poor decision making. Coach.
You know that you can use to coach veterans and to
intentionally apply to civilian careers because there's a reason
why people want to hire veterans.
We bring something to the table that we don't even necessarily
see ourselves because it's in dated into our lives.
(12:15):
But I'd love to to, to ask you what type of qualities that you
think we should be promoting ourselves with, you know, to be
forward focused transitioning. Yeah, so definitely one of the
things that we need to recognizeis all the stuff that you've
come, you know, talking about the positive event timeline and
all that stuff that you've gone through has really given you
leadership, perseverance, commitment, like all of these
(12:38):
qualities that once you leave the military and hit that wall,
like, OK, what do I do now? There's no one telling me what
to do. There's no schedule on the wall,
you know, there's really nothingthat's driving my my motivation
at this moment other than kind of to survive.
So some people, you know, they can still hear me.
Yes. All right.
Sorry about that. Yeah.
(12:58):
So some people end up having, you know, getting stuck, right?
They don't know what to do. So I do I international coaching
federation, the ICF coaching style, which is not as
directive. There's a lot of coaching out
there that is directive. Like here's the strict thing
that you need to do now, like, you know, make a resume.
What we do in ICF is more partner with the person, help
(13:19):
them figure out what those positive qualities are that they
have, how to figure out what thepurpose is that they want to now
drive their intention toward. And then to help them create
those those pathways in order tomeet those goals and to get to
the position or the job or the degree that they want.
So that's what we're, that's what I'm here for in terms of
(13:41):
the veteran coaching. Let can can I do a quick follow
up, Stacy, as a as a medic, as acorpsman myself, when I got
hurt, that desire to help veterans never went away and I
had to find a new way to do that.
Do you feel like this is something that has helped you
(14:02):
sort of hold on to that side of yourself that when you first
came in? What gave you fulfillment?
Do you feel like this is part ofthat still, or does it feel like
a brand new thing to you? No, I've been working with the
VA as well. And that's all I've been doing
is working with veterans and forveterans.
And as the, as the, as I tell well as an NCO and as an
officer, as I tell my peers, my subordinates, I'm like, listen,
(14:25):
you know, we, we are here to serve the war fighter.
And so in my mind, I'm serving the war fighter both in the
service and out of the service. Heck, yeah.
All right. Thanks.
You know, I was going to talk toyou about post traumatic stress
and therapies, but I want to sort of preface my question with
(14:46):
a question to you about which both questions are to you, but
one more personal than the other.
As a combat veteran, do you haveare are you coping with your own
mental health struggles? Yeah, definitely.
I have my own stuff going on andI also reach out and have a a
(15:07):
therapist of my own. So I do think that getting care,
even as a therapist is important, helps you take care
of yourself so you can take careof others.
Have you found that when dealingwith your own issues, I don't
want to call them issues becausethat makes it sound so negative,
but you know, when dealing with your own experiences, is it
(15:30):
difficult or more difficult to take on other people's burdens
when you're providing therapy for them or how is that?
Is that a challenge or like a personal workplace kind of
challenge? It can be right.
So we always have to self monitor.
We call that counter transference when it's not the
veteran making like you looking at you as you're as if you're
(15:54):
the the bad commander or something, which is
transference, right? Counter transference is now me
looking at them and treating them differently based on my
experiences. So we always have to monitor for
counter transference and make sure that I'm not doing that to
them. So again, therapy is important
for clinicians and sometimes when you go to school for
psychology, social work, etcetera, they make you go to
(16:15):
therapy in order to kind of recognize what you're bringing
to the session so that you are monitoring your own counter
transference and trying to keep that out of the room.
So you're focusing directly on what the client needs and where
the client needs to go. That's interesting.
So I shouldn't go to school for this just to win arguments with
my wife? There are, there are.
It's helpful. OK, good.
(16:37):
So as I said, I've tried a number of different mental
health modalities, including eyemovement, desensitization and
reprocessing, which is EMDR. For all you alphas out there,
can you kind of breakdown what EMDR is or what the process is,
or EMDR for dummies? Let's do it that way.
(16:59):
Or for me. For those who haven't been
through it or are really interested to learn more about
who would qualify for it. Sure.
So it's a memory based therapy. So we'll kind of start there.
We look at your specific memories that are holding up the
issues that you're having today.So if you come with depression,
we'll say, OK, you know, what are the situations or the events
that bring up your depression today?
(17:20):
And then we'll look at those situations and events and try to
find other memories that had similar thoughts, feelings,
physical sensations all the way down into your past.
And we do the same thing for PTSD.
So it's, it's anything that can can has a memory, a memory chain
associated with it, the EMDR canhelp with.
Now what we do with the memoriesis we desensitize them.
There's a bunch of different things that we can try to
(17:42):
explain how this works, but the one that I like the most is the
working memory theory. So basically you bring up
something scary, right? Some memory that you have that
is still bringing up some activation in your body and
making your thoughts run. And then I'm going to do
something over here, distract you.
Your brain can't hold on to all that stress and be distracted at
(18:03):
the same time. So when the memory gets
reconsolidated back into your neurons, back into your brain,
it doesn't have as much juice left.
But we keep doing that. And as we keep doing that, it
brings down the juice until there's no juice left.
And it's a 0. One of the metaphors that we use
is a 2 liter bottle of soda, right?
So right now, if you're coming in, you're all tense.
You're all a 2 liter bottle of soda.
(18:23):
That's all tough and hard, right?
And shook up, right? All we do is crack it, crack it,
crack it, and all that steam goes out.
The memory is still there. However, how you experience the
memory is now different and that's the goal is to experience
the memory differently, have some adaptive resolution.
Usually after we desensitize thememory, the person can connect
(18:44):
to positive things that have happened in their life and come
to some adaptive resolution, like I'm not a bad person or
something like that. I mean, there are, I've been
through other modalities where there's this sort of like
distinctive beginning, middle and end.
Does EMD, does EMDR work off that sort of timeline or what's
that like for most people? Yeah.
(19:05):
So the first thing that you do is you come in and do a regular
intake, but also part of that intake is going to be an EDR
target list basically. So we're again trying to find
the memories that we need to go to.
And that's the first phase of an8 phase program.
The second phase is doing the positive event timeline, right?
Or doing something in order to increase your access to the
(19:26):
adaptive material that makes theadaptive resolution something
that is easier to grasp for yourbrain because it's front loaded.
It's there. We also make sure at that point
that you have a way to state shift so that if you're upset,
you can relax, right? Or also we, we do tell you how
the process is going to go for the next couple phases.
Phases 3 through 6 are all just reprocessing phases, right?
(19:49):
They're all happen very quickly in a, in a session.
And then basically we, we close the session and re evaluate
which are the 7th and eighth phase of the of the, the
process. So it's 8 phases and we just go
1 memory after the other starting usually
chronologically, but not always chronologically from the
earliest memory in our list to the present memory.
(20:12):
And we also do some future templates for relapse
prevention. So you sort by size or last
modified. Sorry, just more thinking like
when you're going through the trauma is like I was thinking
like when you're going through your Dropbox trying to clean it
out, like do you get rid of the biggest stuff first that you
don't need or do you go after the this is wildly, I could
(20:36):
literally just sit down with youand buy you lunch and talk to
you for four hours about this specifically because it's
fascinating to me. So here I have a metaphor,
right? So we have the the Jenga tower.
And why I use this is because what we can say is like we, we
start out with the early memories, right?
Because these memories are the ones that feed up and tell us
(20:56):
the rest of our experience. What is wrong with us?
I'm bad. This is what I learned when I
was a kid. And it it's going up, you know,
throughout the process. And you can even think about
somebody that you know, was a gunner and is blaming themselves
for not saving one of their buddies or the squad or
whatever. And then you talk to them and
it's like, well, you know, I've,I'm, I'm always a bad person or
(21:19):
I never do anything, right? Right.
And that's because this piece down here is feeding up to that.
So if I worked on this piece andsaid, no, you know, you did your
job, right? You gotta also think about the
enemy. They, they they had a part in
this too. And they're like, yeah, you're
right. But all of a sudden this other
piece comes back up and says, yeah, but you don't do anything,
right? Right.
So this is just another example of that.
So if we start from the early memories at some point, and I'm
(21:42):
going to do this on purpose, butat some point if we keep
clearing out these memories, thewhole thing will collapse,
right? The whole memory network because
of generalization. So if you learn down here that
I'm a good person, then it's going to start to seep into all
the other memories and say like that underlines.
The negativity that you've been sort of tied to certain things
and events. How much are you finding that
(22:02):
you have to go back into somebody's youth?
Because here's here's the thing,like, I'm sorry, I don't want to
cut you off, but you know, childhood traumas affect us all.
Is is that the kind of concept? We usually look for one, right?
Doesn't mean we're going to start there.
Depending on how much time we have for the client, sometimes
we don't have all the time in the world.
So for the VA, for example, sometimes we have 10 sessions or
(22:24):
12 sessions. So we might start with the
memory that we know based on ourconversation with the veteran,
that is the one that before it they were OK, yeah, sure, there
was bad stuff, but after it is when they were really
symptomatic. So we might start with that
memory instead of going chronologically to see if we can
reduce the temperature. And then if we have time, then
we can start going back and working our way up.
(22:45):
I see. You're like speaking my language
here. You're very clinical about
something that I'm very passionate about.
And you know, I, I want your insight and maybe some ways we
can encourage those that have isolated themselves to realize
that that they need help and then to maybe seek it.
But I think realizing they need help is is step one.
(23:06):
Yeah, and I get minimization allthe time.
I get the, the other side of, you know, my, my experience was
worse than yours, right? So I get people coming to me and
be like, I shouldn't even be here.
You, you have other people that you need to see, right?
So what you went through, whatever it might be, how bad it
might have been, if it hurt you,that's all that matters, right?
Doesn't matter how it affected somebody else or what happens to
(23:28):
other people. I'm here with you.
I need to work with you to get to you where you need to be the
best person that you can be. And we have therapy, right, to
deal with some of the trauma stuff.
And what we're also talking about here is the, the chronic
pain aspect of things where we have acute pain, right, which is
the flesh wounds. And you have the chronic pain
that is also affected by those negative thoughts, like I won't
(23:50):
be able to do this anymore. You know, people won't love me
anymore. You know, I'm, I'm physically
different. I can't participate in mountain
climbing with my friends anymore, you know, whatever it
might be. So that there's that stuff that
we think about that also makes the actual pain feel worse or
the experience of pain worse. So all of these things have, can
go into an ecosystem. And that's one of those things
(24:11):
that I'm, I'm imagining as far as my, my little business model
here, you know, it's like. A mind map.
Exactly. You know, look at clinical
stuff, how do I help them deal with the, the issues, right as,
as we call them, the you know, the, the problems And then how
to coach them from coming out, you know, expecting something to
be different, as you were sayinga moment ago, you know, coming
(24:33):
out and not having taken the time they needed to heal.
How do I get them from where they are to again, finding that
new purpose when they might not be able to be that police
officer anymore because of something physical or mental,
Right? What what can we do and how do
we get there? And what qualities do you bring
to to that position or or your your goal?
(24:56):
I wanted to fix. The.
Question you asked though, Joe, like Docfi, do you have any
recommendations for loved ones of a veteran who are who is
struggling, that doesn't or isn't ready to recognize within
themselves that they need help? How can they approach them in a
thoughtful way to to encourage them, arouse them to get
support? Yeah, that's a tough one. the VA
(25:17):
does have a, a coaching into care program, right?
So that they, they have a caregiver program that you can
call in and, and get some ideas and thoughts with and they'll,
they'll guide you through it a little bit.
But as far as what, what I wouldsay to them is, you know, be
patient and don't, don't be afraid of the tough
conversations. You know, it's how you have
(25:38):
those tough conversations, but don't be afraid of them.
You know, we don't want to attack.
We don't want to make somebody feel belittled or minimized, but
at the same time, you need to have a sit down and be like, you
know what, what's happening here?
You know, I'm I'm sure it's not what you expected at your life
to be and there might be a better way.
And you know, how do we get you there?
I for me, what, what my biggest wake up call was, was knowing
(26:01):
the effect it had on the people around me.
And, and so I, I think that that's something like you said,
be patient, be willing to have those conversations, but not,
you know, accusatory, but more just if you don't have a
purpose, you're going to flounder and you're going to
flail and you're going to flap your arms and people are going
to get hit around you. So yeah, thank you so much.
(26:22):
I think purpose is the, the, thebiggest thing, right, is
identifying, you know, kind of healing the purpose that you
had, right? And then finding a, a new
purpose or strengthening the onethat you, you that was reduced
over time, you know, whatever itmight be.
But purpose is a huge thing. And if we can install that, I
think we can actually save lives.
Yeah. Do you, for those who maybe
(26:46):
don't know what the clinical signs are of somebody who may be
on a mental on the path to a mental breakdown or you know, on
the edge of suicide, are there any sort of signs or unhealthy
coping mechanisms that or early signs that people could look out
for with the veteran in their life that would maybe cue them
in? Yeah, I mean, the biggest one
(27:08):
is, is, is threatening. You know, you say something,
don't think it's a joke, you know, actually confront it.
Don't laugh it off. If somebody says anything,
giving away stuff, right, and they're trying to close up the
shop, you know, for their life, you know that they people do
that, you know, they just start to give away things and make
sure that they're things are in order so that when they pass,
the next person doesn't have to deal with as much.
(27:31):
And then we have the isolation. I think I might have said that,
but isolation is huge, right? People just stop talking to
people. And that is a big one.
But the biggest thing that you'll find with most suicides,
especially is intoxication, you know, alcoholism, you know,
lessons, inhibitions. And when you talk to somebody,
usually it has something to do with that, you know, that they
(27:52):
they were on or consuming alcohol at the time or something
on those lines. So those are, are some big
things that you want to look at.And then of course, if they've
tried to in the past, right, especially in those like first
like 3 months afterwards, we would probably consider them a
much higher risk of doing it again.
So if they came out of the hospital, a good risk of, you
(28:12):
know, keep an eye on them because it's a better chance as
they start to feel better to getthat energy to actually do
something. Alphas, I want you to go ahead
and check out Paradise institute.com.
We're going to have that websitein our show notes.
That's where you're going to talk to find Doctor V and some
of the programs he offers and some of the like when I opened
(28:35):
up with those questions that these are things that he
developed and it's absolutely a wonderful tool.
You'll also learn more about EMDR and programs that are out
there that that may be able to support you or the veteran in
your life that needs support. While there, don't forget to
follow Doc VS social media handles.
They're right there at the very bottom of the page.
(28:55):
I've I've went and trolled him and I've already followed him.
He doesn't know it yet, but he'sgot a secret stalker.
But anyway, we'll have that website and the socials in our
show notes. Doctor V, Before we as we wrap
up and wind down, is there anything that we haven't
discussed that you think Alpha, the alphas need to hear?
Yeah. And this is, you know, a tough
(29:16):
one because it's like a hard turn.
One of the things that I do workwith people on is harm
reduction, right? And then we haven't talked about
substance abuse at all, except for the alcohol piece.
But in terms of what kills people, what kills veterans, we
have, we talked about suicide. You know, suicide kills how
many, Like 17 up to 20, you know, whatever the number is
now. But I know it's 17 or higher
(29:37):
people a day, right? And that's preventable.
If we look at smoking cigarettes, it's about 60 people
a day, right? We don't talk about it.
We don't, it's not a big thing. But in terms of veterans, we're
talking about about 60 people. And how I got that was taking,
you know, the 6% veteran population from the 480,000
people that passed and knowing full well that veterans and
(30:00):
military smoke at more a higher rate than the rest of the
population. And we have one metric that I
know, you know, works well, 7000veterans a year come down with
lung cancer alone, right? And 80 plus or minus percent of
that is due to smoking. Nicotine has has, has some great
qualities, right? Nicotine isn't the problem, it's
(30:22):
the combustible smoking. So the first harm reduction
method that we can do is get people off of the cigarettes,
onto vaping, onto pouches or, you know, some other nicotine
replacement therapy that is not going to literally kill them
over time. Well that's interesting.
There are more smoking specification classes that you
can go to with your VA, right? Yeah, they have tons of stuff on
(30:46):
there right now. They're not up to snuff in terms
of the the vaping piece. But more and more research comes
out and says that this is one ofthe best ways to transition from
smoking because for especially for veterans that have the the
hip when they breathe in or using the the hand to mouth
action. All of these things kind of go
(31:07):
into the the reason why using a vape is easier than maybe
chewing gum or something. It's like edible crayons would
be good for marines. Something that's still.
Seriously, I, I do remember one last thing, Doctor V is when I
was downrange, we, we had been in a pretty serious firefight
and we lost a few guys. And when we came back to the
FoB, I, I think he was the psychology, but the head Dr. met
(31:34):
the units and he was walking around.
He's like encouraging us to smoke.
He's like, don't, don't even tryto quit right now.
It's too stressful. Like I don't think that's what
people really should be hearing.But anyway, now's the time if
you're still smoking and now's the time to try it.
I know it's really hard as as a former smoker, it's a challenge,
(31:55):
but it can be done. And I thank you for bringing
that up. Appreciate that.
I I totally would have started smoking if somebody didn't and
say, oh, you'll start smoking when you get over there.
I'm just petty. So I was like, OK, now I won't.
Thanks for the heads up like. All right.
Well, Doctor V, we really appreciate you and your time and
all that you're doing for the veteran community and, and
(32:17):
spreading the word on these goodthings and, and EMDR and thank
you for joining us today. And and of course, again, thank
you for your service. Thank you.
Anytime you know you need me to come back, I'll come back.
Yeah, absolutely. It's fantastic conversation.
I do appreciate you. Thank you.
All right, Alpha, stick around for some scuttlebutt after the
break. Hi, my name is Bill Clancy.
(32:40):
I'm the national commander of the Sons of the American Legion.
I'm thrilled that the American Legion family has created the
USA 250 Challenge during my yearas National Commander of the
Sons of the American. Legion.
I've made a personal goal to complete the challenge.
Not one category, not 2, all three categories.
But today I want to talk to you about Physical Activity
(33:03):
challenge. You don't have to.
Run or ride a bike or do anything strenuous.
You can if you want to, of course, but the beauty of the
USA 250 Challenge is that anything fitness related counts.
You can play pickleball, you canwalk the door, you can do chair
yoga. Whatever you choose to do, be
sure to join the challenge. Visit legion.org/USA 2:50 to get
(33:27):
started. Welcome back, Alphas, we hope
you had a great break. Now it's time for some
scuttlebutt, Joe. Oh my goodness, Stacy, thank you
for bringing that up. I love scuttlebutt.
For a generation that lived the war in Afghanistan one grid
square at a time, the war now feels like a series of dots on a
(33:49):
map. A patrol base carved out of a
hard pan soil, a culvert on a highway that never felt safe.
A Ridge where the radio went quiet.
We all had our our names for different places.
We had a a spot that we started out calling the chicken run that
by the time we got to the end ofthe deployment was the most
dangerous run. It used to be where you went
when you were when things got a little crazy up top, you would
(34:11):
take these back roads and the chicken run became the the
chicken run because everybody was scared on it.
But Nathan Keller knows the pullof those dots.
When he and a group of fellow veterans wanted to record the
war they experienced, they knew all their stories would be
easiest to see laid out on a map.
This is such a cool concept, andI cannot believe that in the age
(34:31):
of technology and the ease at which we can do things like this
that this hasn't been done yet. But they launched a project
called Project Athena, a visual map connecting the memories of
soldiers to the coordinates where they occurred.
War is chaotic, and when you're a soldier on the ground, you
rarely see the full picture, said Keller.
And So what they did is they they took these memories,
(34:55):
photos, names, notes, they gathered them all together and
they put them on a map, adding the memories of others and you
and they can fill out a full sort of overall picture of the
war, which is the coolest thing.It's almost like everybody
jumped on Google Maps and play it on Google Maps when it first
dropped. Anybody who deployed went
(35:17):
through the streets of Fallujah on Google, Google Maps as soon
as you could. It was just such a a cool thing.
And this right here personalizesthat towards veterans.
So Keller is a Canadian and served as an armored
reconnaissance soldier with the Royal Canadian Dragoons.
And I'll see they then as a geotech with two combat engineer
(35:37):
regiments, the military's map makers.
He deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 in the Panjwahi.
Do you know how to say that better than I do?
You were. You're laughing at me so I'm
guessing I butchered it. You're fine, go for it.
Pinch Wahi, just come on, fill me out here.
(35:59):
Pinch Wahi district any love with memories that were specific
and unfinished. When he remembers the war,
there's one day and one grid coordinate that stands out for
him. I spent 15 years wondering what
the hell happened that day, Keller said as his unit
patrolled near the town of Kalgor, outside of the town of
Salavat. They were hit and by a
(36:21):
coordinated IED attack. One vehicle after another
exploded as the mission turned to the fog of detonations and
confusion. So before Project Athena
launched, he added photos and details of the engagement to the
map. 3 days after the project went live, a second entry
appeared. An engineer uploaded a photo and
a short account, one Kaler had never seen before.
(36:43):
The missing piece snapped into place.
That day was one of the those moments that stayed with me for
years because I never fully understood what happened.
Gosh, Keller, I've been there. Seeing it on the map with
someone else's account from the same operation finally connected
the dots. It turned a fragmented memory
into something I could understand.
And there is real value in that.Joe, there's an interesting
(37:05):
concept. After President Lincoln was
shot, they interviewed pretty much everybody that was in the
the theater. I never.
Thought you were that old. I know I was there and you know.
It's I'm so sorry. Go ahead.
So they all had different accounts and different
perspectives, but they called, you know, they it's called the
(37:26):
fog of war that everybody under records things in their mind
differently. So this does not surprise me.
Carry on. I, I think that's really
interesting and, and I'll give you a very short example of my
own. For me, Fallujah was very small
in my mind. You know, the streets that we
walked down. I knew those streets, even
though even the ones that I walked down once I, I could tell
(37:47):
you the color of the buildings, I could tell you how high they
were, because while the Marines were looking everywhere, I
focused on the rooftops. I just for some reason that was
where, where my mind kept going and, and having read accounts of
some of the scout snipers and people that were doing Overwatch
in a weird sort of way, it made my war feel very small.
(38:10):
And I don't, I don't think that's a bad thing.
I think that sometimes you buildthings up in your head and it's
OK to let it be something that'sjust a part of your life.
Because when you build it up into something even bigger than
a big thing that it already is, it, it tends to over shadow
other things. And I don't think that that's
good for your, you know, your mental health.
But from the start, Athena leaned on open data and
(38:32):
community input. Tactical infrastructure like
COPS and control bases begin with the US Marine made data
set. It was done in crayon and they
were able to transfer it into something digital.
Everything else. I could just see a bunch of
marines sticking around with their crayons like where's?
My brother, stop using all the red Wilson.
(38:55):
Everything else grows from veterans uploading photos,
including fuzzy dates if exact ones are gone, dropping pins
where an OP once stood and writing the short plane captions
that makes sense to the people who are there.
Curation is the hard part with any crowd sourced history.
The project has a moderation queue that reveals that reviews
all submissions in a process that allows users to report
entries they believe are false or have bad coordinates.
(39:17):
But Keller trust the veteran network to keep it honest.
It is a small world and people will call out what does not pass
the smell test. The goal is not to referee every
sentence. It is to keep the map useful and
fair and let honest memories stack into something bigger than
one's tour version of events. The reactions have been the
(39:40):
proof veterans like having a place to park their story that
is not a social feed that disappears by the morning.
Families in the hall and have asked for more details than they
were ever given at the time, notout of morbid curiosity, but to
finally understand what happenedand where.
Keller approached those conversations carefully and
found that clarity helps. They want to know that place.
(40:02):
It gives them a measure of closure, he said.
So though Athena began as a project among Canadian vets,
close to 1/4 of visitors now come from the United States.
Submissions by American veteransare still just a fraction of the
system. But Killer hopes that will
change and American troops will begin to catalog their own
photos and memories. There is loads.
There's so much. And and if they do that, there's
(40:26):
going to be a better timeline ofthis war done from people that
didn't write history books. It's going to be ground troops,
people that were really there. And there's, I don't believe
outside of finding something like a diet, you know, the
Diaries from World War 2, that you're ever going to get
something quite like this. Because I think, I hope that war
has changed in a way that in thenext decade or so that that
(40:48):
these types of of battles, you know, no longer happen.
You know, our allies from say, Poland or the UK or, you know,
wherever also start weighing in on this would be interesting.
Their perspectives are always very interesting.
Australia, the war was shared byso many nations, like I just
said, but this should reflect that, he said.
(41:11):
There is a quiet urgency to the work.
Afghanistan veterans are still yelling on paper, but the
details fade fast. Hard drives fail.
Phones get upgraded. Coordinates blur.
Whatever our politics, citizens elect leaders who make decisions
that affect those who serve, Keller said.
If you want to understand what that means, go look.
There are IDs and gunfights and months of living behind sandbag
(41:34):
walls. Even if you were not physically
wounded, very few people came back without some kind of mental
injury. Keller said he laughed at how
invincible 23 felt. We still don't know it and how
40 looks back at with the bettereyes.
And of course, hindsight is always 2020, you guys.
Yeah, You know, this may not be the place for this, but I just
(41:59):
very recently, I realized that Iused to be able to look back at
everything that I went through at the age that I was and still
feel like I was that person. And when I felt like I was that
person, I could sit in this sortof defensive confidence of
knowing that I did the best I could and it just was what it
was. I'm at a point now where I'm
(42:20):
past that, where I can look backand see the kid that was over
there. And pity is the wrong word.
But I heard for him, he was a kid.
We were all kids. I go through the pictures
sometimes, and these men that I served with that that didn't
make it, have grown in my mind. I see them for some reason as as
40 year old men, 45 year old menwith families and things like
(42:43):
that. And it's such a sobering kick in
the gut when I go through those pictures and I realize we were
children. And I don't mean children.
I don't mean to undermine who wewere.
I'm just saying to see that we were such, so young.
Yeah. To have gone through everything.
I mean, the friends, the friendsI lost that were killed are the,
the same age as my, my stepson is now.
(43:04):
So that's, you know, that puts alot of things in perspective.
It's just, it's crazy. I think that that he's got a
good point in saying, though, that maybe the best argument for
Project Athena is the smallest one.
Most of us, like myself, I'm notwriting my story down.
There's music, but my, anything that I write is an escape.
You know, I, I write science fiction and fantasy.
(43:26):
I don't, I don't want to write my story down like that.
I don't enjoy sitting in it longenough that it would take for me
to write that stuff down. But we have regular stories that
matter to us and the people who love us.
A photo of a plywood hooch that leaked when it rained.
A broken culvert marker that kept you up at night the day
your convoy turned around because a mind plow hit another
(43:46):
device. And then the next vehicle did
too, and the whole plan fell apart.
On their own, these notes feel minor.
Together, across the country, wewill never fully understand.
They look a lot like truth. You can visit Project Athena to
make an account and upload your own stories and photos.
We've got a link in the show notes.
Thanks for finding this story, Joe, and you can find the full
(44:08):
story on Task and Purpose. We'll have that link also in our
show notes. So here's another story we've
got for you. In April 1862, the Battle of
Shiloh became one of the bloodiest clashes of the
American Civil War. There were an estimated 23,746
casualties over a 2 day battle. That is unfathomable.
(44:29):
I can't even say that word. I mean that number's huge.
On the Union side, 1754 men werekilled and 80, four, 8408 were
wounded. The Confederate suffered similar
losses with 1728 killed and 8012wounded with and these are all,
these are American citizens regardless of what it was.
(44:50):
I mean, these were Americans fighting Americans that that's
crazy. It just seems so senseless with
the field medicine still primitive.
Let me just back up and say, listen, the morality of the war
was definitely on point. It just seems like a conflict
like this. I don't know loss is lost but.
(45:13):
No, I I get what you're saying. It's not that it wasn't an
atrocity that needed to be corrected at at almost any cost,
but the cost was complete. It feels like there had to have
been another way. It feels like there was a group
of people that were just unwilling to give just a little
bit, just enough for our for, for something like this to not
(45:34):
have happened. And I wonder what they would say
in retrospect and honesty as to if they accept the
responsibility for having pushedit this far.
Well, it was just pure. It was pure greed.
No, but no woman should own another human money on the backs
of anybody else. That's it's just.
(45:55):
Anyway, war sucks. With field medicine still
primitive during the early days of the war, and germ theory
still a relatively new concept, hundreds of wounded men were
left to wait for aid in the rainor mud on in the battlefield.
However, a day turned into night.
Shockingly, some of the surviving wounded began to glow
in a greenish blue hue. Moreover, doctors and medical
(46:18):
personnel later reported that those that were glowing wound,
had glowing wounds, had lower infection rates and healed much
more quickly than those without them.
So the otherworldly phenomenon was quickly dubbed the Angels
Glow by soldiers for its seemingly healing properties.
It would take 139 years. You remember this, Stacy.
(46:39):
I do, however, to apparently unravel the mystery surrounding
the glow. In the back of my mind I'm like
serenading this, this whole glowwith just let your soul glow.
That's fantastic. Do you want to pull the lyrics
up and run through it right quick?
Oh. So silky smooth, let it shine
(47:02):
through. Yes, yes, sing it, Queen.
In 2001, high school students Bill Martin and Jonathan Curtis
at Bowie High School in Bowie, MD, worked with Martin's mother,
Agricultural Research Service microbiologist Phyllis Martin.
I again, I want to see these business cards.
(47:24):
Hi. I'm Martin's mother,
Agricultural Research Service microbiologist Phyllis Martin,
to root out its source. According to the Agricultural
Department, she had previously studied the bacterium.
Oh, Lord Almighty. All right.
Here we go. Fotorhabdos luminescence, but
(47:44):
not too bad. Fotorhabdos luminescence.
OK, sorry, that looked way scarier on paper as a potential
biocontrol agent and knew that this insect pathogen created a
glowing effect. The students found that the
photo Oh my gosh, now I have to say it.
Photo Raidless Photo Rabdous Photo Rabdous Photo Rabdous.
(48:07):
I'm going to have to say that a dozen times.
The students found that the photo Rabdous strains produced
antibiotics that inhibited the growth of other bacteria that
would have caused infections in the wounds, thus aiding in the
soldiers healing. It was known that the glow It
was known that the glowing bacteria live in the guts of the
nematodes, a small parasitic worm.
(48:28):
Geez, who had worms? Everybody had worms they were
in. The mud.
And we found that these nematodes are attracted to small
insects that would have been in the guts and clothing of the
soldiers and the worms would have excreted glowing bacteria.
Gosh, I'm sorry, I'm getting gaggy on that.
(48:50):
Excuse me you guys, You want to pass around those worms that I
need them for my glowing gluts? Throw up in my mouth.
The the excreted glowing bacteria, the excrement of the
glowing, the glow worms. The excreted glowing bacteria
from the parasitic nematode released chemicals that ate away
at serious bacteria infections such as gangrene.
(49:12):
I know that one. The cold and what conditions
after the battle likely made it a perfect hosting conditions for
the worm and bacteria and likelyhelped the soldiers live through
the night. That's pretty crazy.
That is wild and I'm curious what we use in lieu.
I mean, obviously we don't want to use worm excrement for
everything, you know, but I'm curious.
(49:33):
There has to be something that they use.
Dude, weren't you a combat medic?
Yeah, I'm saying though, like, but, but we don't have access
to, you know, we don't clean anything out.
There wouldn't you be in the sphere of knowing what the hell
they used on the battlefield? Oh, no, no, I'm not talking on
the but well, they didn't even use it.
It used them. These worms were like food.
(49:53):
But no, I'm just saying like in hospitals and things like that,
it seems. It seems odd that this isn't I'm
I'm wondering since this isn't probably, you know, utilized in
hospitals, I'm wondering what I was greenside.
They didn't teach me anything like that.
They were like, you know, spit on it and rub the dirt and blood
out and then. Take.
It up, yeah, some Robitussin on it we saw carried around bottles
(50:16):
of robe. So, Melissa Awin, director of
marketing and communications at the National Museum of Civil War
Medicine in Frederick, MD, told Military Times Angel's glow was
a true phenomenon. Phenomenon and one of those
stories about Civil War medicineand soldiers that they hear
questions about often, especially around Halloween.
(50:39):
What's exciting about the story for us, Wynn said, is the modern
interest in determining why it'sgenuinely part of the mission to
use artifacts, storytelling in the historic lessons derived
from that era to educate the public and define the impact on
today's society. We continue to learn from and
benefit from Civil War medicine,and this story highlights how
curiosity about the unique phenomenon has impacted medical
(51:02):
study in the 21st century. Could you imagine the project
that they knew from this battle?People glowed here.
What? Joe, I think we'll know what
your Halloween costume should benext year.
Oh. What's?
Up can you please wear a like like a battle worn Union soldier
(51:22):
uniform and with the RIP with your leg ripped off and put some
of that like glowy chemical on it and then just say you're
Angel touched. Dude I am here for that.
Plus my wife's name is Angel butalso.
But you know. That would be such a deep cut,
so. Much better.
(51:43):
That would be such a deep cut. The four people that got it
would be like, This is the finest example of Halloween
costume that's ever existed. And everyone else would just be
like, what do you like a alien? Education and science, like
you're hitting it on so many loves.
It's a chance to it's a chance to educate.
(52:04):
I legitimately love high effort for for very specific audience.
You know what I'm saying? Like I really love, I love
putting work in. So this is something that that
we can talk about. An actor nerd.
That's going to be like, I know exactly what that is.
Yeah, and then they try to correct me.
It was actually more of a cyan. Okay buddy, just chill.
(52:27):
Alphas, we're going to have thatMilitary Times article in our
show. Not so be sure to check it out,
Check it, check it out also. Thanks.
For listening. Don't forget that we we are now
hosted on Spotify. You can find both audio and
video versions of the podcast. Subscribe to our podcast and
rate our broadcast. Give us all the stars and the
comments and the the good cheer.We only want the positives.
(52:49):
OK, we'll take some feedback too.
You can of course find us on Apple podcast, Amazon,
iHeartRadio, YouTube or wherever.
All the best podcasts are hosts hosted and that's us.
So subscribe to our newsletter and send us mail and guest
recommendations at legion.org. Back slash Tal.
Hey y'all, we'll see you next week.
Bye. Bye.
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