My Dark Shadow: 2x Suicide Survivor & Veteran Advocate Douglas Brinker

Today, I sit down with Douglas Brinker, founder of Beacon 4 Hope LLC, veteran advocate, author, and state-certified peer support specialist. Mr. Brinker shares his powerful story of survival after multiple suicide attempts and how faith, resiliency, and community helped him rebuild his life. His new book, My Dark Shadow: From A Suicidal Self To A Purpose Of Hope, is both a memoir and a guide designed to help others find strength, purpose, and healing in their darkest moments.

In our conversation, Mr. Brinker discusses his journey from childhood struggles, military service, and personal loss to becoming a national voice for suicide prevention. We talk about his advocacy work with the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Toastmasters International, and countless community organizations where he speaks, teaches, and mentors others in crisis. He also shares practical advice for parents, veterans, and anyone navigating hopelessness—emphasizing that one person’s willingness to listen can change a life.

Together, we address the statistics of suicide among veterans, youth, and civilians, while highlighting prevention strategies, coping skills, and the importance of purpose. Mr. Brinker reminds us that “suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem” and that hope, connection, and faith are available to everyone.

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Transcript

And gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey. And. At zero 100 hours this morning, I got an email letting me know that my podcast had become the number one podcast of the month for suicide prevention and awareness. Now, normally I don't bring up acknowledgements, but that one was important to me.
Uh, just posted about it on social media and, you know, that wouldn't be possible without guests like today's guests sharing their stories, being vulnerable about the hardships they went through. Their battle with suicidal ideation, as well as not only the guests who share their stories, but highlight nonprofi ts, books, resources, and other events that are spreading prevention and awareness.
And so I just really wanna take the time today to thank all of the guests who have shared their stories, will share their stories. And all of the listeners, for all of y'all who are engaging in these heavy conversations, a lot of people don't wanna talk about this kind of stuff, but it's necessary. And so I appreciate all of you who are.
Taking the time and effort to talk about this stuff. That was up till 5:00 AM this morning working on a recent military suicide that happened aboard the ship I served on. So, you know, so many people say, well, it's just a military thing, or it's, you know, it can never happen to me. It can happen to anyone.
I've seen it happen to men and women, old and young, white and black, uh, military civilian. Almost every family has been touched by suicide or will be at some point. So please continue to look into these resources, prevention awareness. And again today. Douglas Brinker. He was on my show. 180 or so episodes ago, back when it was audio only.
I never even saw him until Facebook. And you know, so here we are face to face, so to speak, through the virtual world. Since then, he has published another book. He, every time I turn around, he's at some kind of veteran gathering, getting an award, or giving a speech or doing something. You know, he is a busy, busy man, founder of Beacon for Hope, LLC and Mr.
Brinker. So great to have you here. It's an honor to be here, shipmate. Yeah. And I'd love for you to, I mentioned a whole bunch right there, so let's kind of slowly unpack, you know. Starting with, uh, for those who haven't heard you on my show before, kind of your journey and what got you into suicide prevention and awareness?
So my journey starts, uh, 26 years ago on August 7th, 1999 when I fi rst attempted to take my life, which I wear this band, uh, do not give in to the war within. It has my 20 year. Anniversary etched on the inside of it, and now it's been 26 years, and I was in Columbus, Ohio for the VFW National Convention where I celebrated my 26 years since my fi rst attempt.
And I was able to connect with VFW State Commanders and identify if they have a mental health program. I, I made a lot of networking friends. Uh, I even made a networking friend with somebody from the Department of Europe from Germany who's going to do what they can to bring me over to Germany to speak at some point.
Wow. Yeah. And uh, I know you said the word fi rst attempt there, and I remember when you were on my show you mentioned a second attempt, correct. Yes, A year and a half later, February of 2001. And can you kind of talk, uh, just briefl y with everyone about, you know, what got you through those, especially, uh, you know that second one?
Well, I give glory to the good savior above because he has pulled me through not just those, but six other. Potential life ending situations from being hit by a bike twice, uh, being nearly drowned to navigating a Navy ship through 40 foot waves, 20 foot swells and 45 degree rolls with 349 other ship mates in the North Atlantic en route to Beirut, Lebanon in November of 1982 to my near fatal staph infection from the sand of Iraq in 2004.
Uh, so I've, I've faced death on number of occasions, and what has got me through has been my faith, my, my stubbornness. Not to give in to negative Nancys I call them, right? People who pull you down into that. Whole. And then obviously in these last 10, 15, 20 years now being connected with, uh, the great organizations like the VFW Toastmasters International, where I have found my voice to share publicly eight years next month, it will be that I came out publicly.
In front of over 200 people in my story and shared of my fi rst attempt, which my own stepfather did not even know. And my late mother who went to her grave nine years ago July, um, never knew. So being connected and having community has been the greatest saving grace that I have found. And then now my work.
Here, uh, in mental health with veterans. Being a state certifi ed peer support specialist has allowed me the benefi t of meeting others who have went and faced that wall of death and have now built a life of success and hope. I really like what you said about the
quote negative Nancys, because if you look at the book of joke from the Bible man who suffered everything, you could imagine what really broke him.
Were his friends, which he calls, you know, one of my favorite quotes, what miserable comforters are you, you know, when, when everything fell apart, they came there and they pointed the fi nger at him. You know, so your company can really make or break your circumstance because he went through all of that and he was still on good terms with God, and then his friends just, you know, broken down.
And it, it really matters who you have around you, people who are pulling you up and, and supporting you, or people who are pushing you down. And then when you we're last on the show over, well over a year ago, you spoke about writing a book with the intention of 44 chapters for the 44 a day. A lot of people hear the number 22 a day, and you had said it was more so toward 44 a day.
What can you tell us about those numbers now and you know about your book? Well, the book is, is Live Now. It is available at Dot Publishing Bookstore currently and will be within the next week or so available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble bookstores. It's 22 chapters of my life because I wanted to play into the, the branding.
Mind you of what the world is stigmatized to believe of 22 a day. But we really know with other, um, vetted information that it's realistically somewhere between 38 and 42 44 a day. Uh, those unreported. And that's where. It doesn't matter really. Yeah. It doesn't matter whether it's one a day, whether it's a hundred a day, it's one too many.
Yeah. And what I've found in my writings, you know, I unpack, there's some deep, dark, raw material that I've recollected in my early years with bullying and everything. Hazing. Moving around to different schools, um, not fi nding who I really was. You know, I never had purpose. And it wasn't until obviously 26 years ago that the good Lord helped me fi nd purpose.
And now I'm a stout advocate in all platforms, all spaces that immerse myself with. And yeah, the numbers, it don't matter. It really don't, to me, it's, we know that by the end of this show, at least minimal, one person either be a active duty, a veteran, a teenager, uh, a 70-year-old, white male, socialized, isolated, uh, no, no cutoff, you know, cutoff from everything in life.
Those, those numbers are the real raw numbers, and that's where this book, it's not intended to make money. It's intended to change perspective of life and save lives.
Because at the end of every chapter, I've put a teaching topic in there, what I learned, there's always a silver lining. To every negative, uh, situation.
There's always a quote at, at every chapter. I've put quotes that I hope that the readers will tie back into the content of the chapter, and the chapters are very small. Some, some chapters, only page and a half, two pages. It's a quick read. 130 pages even have even have, uh, PA pictures in the, in the back of the book.
Of my childhood and, and reference to those chapters. Yeah. And so would you say it's kind of like a combination medley of memoir and, and self-help guidebook? Yep. That's exactly what it's done. It's, it's designed everybody, every one of us, every single one of us have a story, have a voice, have a purpose.
And I teach people, as I've been taught to discover that purpose, and I've mentioned it to other communities, that when we don't have purpose, we just exist. And we're just taking up space. And that's where I felt for many years that I was just absorbing oxygen in life and working with, uh, editors and the publisher, we've put together a pretty nice, pretty nice piece in my opinion.
And I hope that the readers who buy this. Uh, take time to refl ect and know that there always is help. You have to lower your, lower your pride, uh, know that it's okay not to be okay, and more importantly, that hope is real. You know, helping one person every day, that's my mantra, right? If I can't help at least one person every day, then I have to help more the next day.
For sure. And you know, you mentioned a lot there about purpose, which we know plays a huge role, especially post-military service. A lot of veterans and law enforcement lose a signifi cant part of their purpose and their identity, if not all of it. But going back, you mentioned even just in your childhood, you know, feeling purposeless, leading up to your fi rst suicide attempt.
What advice do you have for people, uh, you know, especially parents, mentors, people who are raising children? How do we help give our children purpose what church It starts with, with tough love. It, it starts with, in my opinion, being involved and not afraid to ask those questions. You know, if you, if you notice your child is struggling, you need to ask them questions.
Are you okay? What's going on? Is there anything I can do to help? Because if we disconnect ourselves from our child's life. We validated to them that they're just, they're
just in our space and, and this is all, in my opinion, of course, I, I wasn't the greatest dad with my two sons, but I can guarantee it that they respect and honor the work that I do today.
And. Uh, in my dedication page, they are my very reason why I breathe life every day. And what I would say to any parent is if you see something, say something and do something with that. That young 9-year-old, 12-year-old, 15-year-old, because we lose too many young people. Way too many young people to suicide every day.
The world has no idea how many people under 17 take their life. There's, there's the dark web that teaches kids how to take their life. There's live videos. Yeah, there's games. Mm-hmm. That we talked about, I believe maybe on the show a year or so ago. About the Russian game called the Blue Whale Game, where it teaches you 50 goals and on the 50th goal is to take your life.
We don't need to teach children that suicide is a good thing. When life's battles hit them hard. We need to teach them love and having dignity and respect and resiliency for themself. Something. I never had something, I never had no group, no supports in my life that really were instrumental at that tough love.
My tough love was granddad's, uh, willow stick for misbehaving, and a stern Catholic nun in a children's home. That was my discipline before I went in the military. And what I'll say is, yeah, you mentioned never underestimate the power of trends. Like social media has such a huge poll over our youth. And I remember at my high school, uh, you know, in my sister's grade, she was a year below me.
It was trending that the young girls would cut themselves, not because of suicidal ideation or a desire for self-harm, but quote, it looked cool, or all the cool girls were doing it. Uh, and I'm sure that's happened in a lot of different places. And, you know, there are other challenges and trends online that have gotten people injured, harmed, or, you know, gotten them to do stuff that they don't.
Necessarily realize the moral implications of at that young age. And you know, I've guessed on shows about suicide prevention awareness, and one of the things I talk about is the amount of suicides that happen between ages of 10 and 14, like you said, it is, it is saddening. It is sickening. And it is, you know, very.
It's not something like, like I I said in the very beginning of episode, not everyone talks about this stuff. Not everyone wants to talk about this stuff. It's a, it is somber topic,
right? I always make a joke that I found out that, um, on fi rst dates, it's not, you know, I don't talk about work on the fi rst date anymore because, you know, it's like, what do you do for a living?
I stop suicides. Oh, you know, it's a instant conversation silencer, but I think it's so important on platforms like these through writing through, like you said, reaching as many platforms and mediums as we can speaking. And, you know, it's so important, and I want to get into the name of your book. Uh, if you could mention that and kind of go into what helped develop that idea and, and what it means.
Oh my dark shadow from a suicidal self to a Purpose of hope. You know, my initial thought on this was we have all these adversities in our life that I consider shadows, dark shadows. Those hidden things like you talk about the, the, the taboo situations that no family wants to talk about because, you know, what would Cousin Grace think or what would Grandma Mary say, or what would clergymen Joan say if they knew that?
That, uh, the, the family that's the perfect family in the community, that one of their family members attempted to take their life by suicide. And so I thought about it and that might dark shadow. All of us have a arc shadow. It's how we choose to. Clear up that dark shadow. You know, for about eight years after my fi rst divorce, I lived with what I call a black cloud over my head, even on the clearest of days, my life still felt impacted by by doom and gloom.
I was just existing and pushing myself to go to work every day, pushing myself to get dressed, you know, taking depression medications to just function. Maybe, you know, we know more now the over-prescribing of psychotropic medications maybe. Maybe that was a leading cause. To my attempt, I don't know. I'm not the psychiatrist.
I'm not the chemist behind the development of drugs, but my dark shadow's designed that no matter how bad life is, it doesn't deserve to result in a suicide either an attempt. Or a completion, you know, I saw it somewhere, somewhere in the neighborhood of 750,000 people a year. Make an attempt. If you think about that, in communities that are only 25, 30,000.
Just think of everybody in your community made an attempt between now and December 31st and say out of that, out of that population that 10% were successful. And then the, you think about how many people it impacts. I just heard someone speak the other day. That 136 people are impacted by one suicide, 136 people, family, friends, community economics.
You think about, a lot of people don't understand the, the wound is left. The, the wound is left open for all of us to. Try to try to clear up and we never, can you lose a, you lose a 20, 21-year-old son to suicide, that's no more, you know? No. And if it's your only son or only daughter, that's no chance of ever having grandchildren or great-grandchildren.
That's never a chance for them to have a life better than what you've had because. Most of us, I believe, want our children and our grandchildren to have a much more happier, successful life than what we've went through because we don't want for mistakes, our mistakes to be repeated generation after generation, after generation.
And so my dark shadow, it's, it's written. That I hope the readers will know that no matter what you are going through that eventually with, with the belief in whatever higher being you worship with, belief in yourself, that with resiliency, with some coping, skill development, and then most importantly.
Finding out your mantra and your purpose. I never knew. And look at, I'm an addict now for doing this platform of eradicating suicide. This is something that's been going on for nearly a hundred years, more prevalent back in the thirties. But if you think about the thirties and 2025. It's no different. The thirties was plagued by plague and everything else in 2025 were plagued by stigma, politics, religion, church of state, you name it, shootings.
My own town. Mayor lost his recent graduated niece to murder. And they just caught the murderer out in California yesterday. Wow. So you think about it, 18 years old, just starting life. Just graduated high school, getting ready to go to college, have a life ruined just like that. But you think about it in the, in the context of suicide.
Suicide's, a permanent solution to a temporary problem. May repeat that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. If I would've completed that fi rst attempt,
I'd left a three-year-old little boy without a father. My now Marine veteran son wouldn't have never been born, so a whole generation, another generation of me would've never existed. And more importantly, I never knew my. I really never trusted myself. I always doubted every decision, and there's still times now not as prevalent as before, but we always doubt everything we do or say.
But I learned a long time ago that words are powerful, but actions are even more powerful. If you back up what you say, it builds character, it increases productivity in
your life and it makes you a much more validated person to talk. No, I don't know everything about suicide. I'm still learning. I'm not the the total expert.
I don't have degrees in psychology and stuff. I do have lived experience. I've been in those trenches, and a lot of listeners right now, I can guarantee you there's some listeners right this minute that they've heard this same song in dance. But what have they done to change that song and dance to make life a little better?
Have they raised their hand, said, hey. I surrender, you know, I gotta put it in somebody else's hands. I've gotta ask for hope because what I've been doing is getting the same result. Right. And I think, like you said, a permanent solution, one you cannot take back. And, you know, I, I really like, I recently wrote in a book as a contributing author, and when I came to, you know, the topic of suicidal ideation and hopelessness, I talked about.
There's a saying they have in South Carolina, it's on the license plates, and I, I wrote the Latin and then the English translation, which is, wow, I hope I breathe, you know? And. What I talked about was, as long as you're breathing, there's still opportunity. Even after failure, after setback, after everything goes wrong, you, you could say, even if you're, if you're homeless while you breathe, there's still hope because there will be opportunities topi to rebuild, you know, and to recreate.
But when you. Sever your life, you sever all those opportunities to make anything better than where you're at right now. You know? So I, I think it's so important that while why breathe? I hope, I really like that saying, you know, and I think it's important that everyone kind of refl ects on that. And you know, you work with a lot of veterans, you speak at a lot of veteran events.
Um, from talking to them, because I, I assume they come up to you afterward and you talk one-on-one and that you have a lot of friends in, you know, American Legion, VFW and all that was there, are there anything, like any patterns or any really shocking stories that have kind of like shifted your perspective, how we should address veterans or approach them?
Well, it happened to me at the VFW National Convention. Uh, comrade I had met, um, was introduced actually, uh, back here in my hometown. He, he's older, a Vietnam vet. No one would spend time to listen. He was suicidal because someone only wanted to give them maybe fi ve minutes of their time. And we spoke on the phone for 90 minutes
and he said, this is all I want someone to take the time that they truly are invested in my safety and wellbeing to actually listen to me vent.
Yeah, it's frustrations of multiple levels, like an onion. Uh, but every case is different. You know, the, the saying goes, you never know until you've walked a mile in my shoes, what I'm going through. But yet we're so, we're so easy to judge people just by listening to a statement or appearance or anything.
And so I took that time because. No one took the time to listen when I was struggling. Now, perhaps I did not reach out. I can't remember. That's 26, almost 27 years ago. But I do know now today that if we take the time, if we make the time, that's the thing. This phone, this was never around 30, 40 years ago.
But we don't have a problem being on Facebook 6 million hours a year or other social platforms. Yeah, we have the convenience of a computer in our hand, but we spend most of it for our own self-pleasure. Then making it a tool, accessing apps like Post-Traumatic Stress Coach. And other apps. Battle buddy.
There's some great apps on here that many of us will not access. Or the other thing is we won't take the time to take a call at three o'clock in the morning when somebody doesn't feel safe. And I say this because I've had to take those calls at one, two o'clock in the morning. From family, not from friends, not from strangers, but from family members.
I've had to take a call at one 30 in the morning because that person did not feel safe. Yeah, I've, I've been there myself. We all live busy lives. We all live busy, busy lives. We wear 500 different kinds of hats. And it's hard to have work-life balance, but that's important to understand that in a busy world, we need to insert ourselves into positions where we have self-care, where we have educated awareness of different resources.
That are forwarded to us by different organizations that can be that hand up and hand instead of a hand out. And like you said, the stigma. These taboo topics have been a stigma for centuries. Yeah, but we're not doing, we're just, we are spending our wheels. The government pours money, billions of dollars into suicide prevention.
But what are we doing with the money? What evidence-based solutions are we don't doing with billions of dollars into suicide prevention? What support groups, what. What avenues have an evidence base tie to 'em that shows if I put $1 million here, I get $2 million worth of results. Because that's really what it's about.
It's a return on investment. It's a simple marketing thing that we do is business every day. If we put $500 million into our business, we hope in fi ve years that we will get back. Three or $4 billion in return. 'cause if not, we're just, we're just in business, just to be in business. And that goes with suicide prevention.
We need to educate people early and often about the signs, about the coping skills, about deep breathing, about taking the time more than just fi ve minutes to listen. 90% of the time and only talk 10% of the time when somebody's struggling and feeling that life doesn't matter anymore.
Yeah, I completely agree. Having been in a situation myself where shit mate shows up in the middle of the night at my barracks room says I need to talk and you know, I'm thinking to myself, I kind of examined a few hours this and that, but you know, I said, all right, let's go out for a drive and, and just talk.
You know, I really appreciate what he said because it's so sad to think that. That suicide is preventable. You know, there's a lot of things that go on in people's minds that sometimes we don't understand, but a lot of times it's something as simple as, I just want someone to listen to know someone cares.
And like you said, to actually have death to it. So many people are quick to ask, Hey, are, are you right? Is everything going okay? And they just want to hear that I'm fi ne. You know, or, or the same old, same old a lot of people are. If someone said, no, actually I'm not. Okay. And I really need to talk. A lot of people would be caught off guard and, and like, whoa, I don't know about that.
And I think being ready to, again, we prioritize so many things, social media, especially like you said, the, the doom scrolling, the spending hours on online, just scrolling, not learning anything, not benefi ting anyone. Yeah, giving ourselves that dopamine hit of this is funny or this is comical, where if everyone were to spend the amount of time they spent on social media pouring into helping one another, that we could already have a much, much better world.
But you know, like you said, people are very self-absorbed and I think to think that all he wanted was someone to talk and, and listen to him. And you know, there's actually a country song out there about how a single phone call saved a guy when he. One to commit suicide. That's all it takes sometimes is a single phone call.
And you mentioned you couldn't remember if you reached out or not. And I think that's why it's important. It's on us to reach out because people who are in those situations, sometimes they don't always reach out with, with men, especially military men, with a stigma, they're not always gonna reach out for help, sometimes a lot or like a lot of young women I've dated.
You know, it was a, I don't want to be a burden, you know, I don't want to trouble people, I don't wanna take away from their time. Right. So there's so many factors that play into it. So we can't rely on everyone who is in this situation to reach out to us and, and wave a big fl ag saying, I need help.
Sometimes we need to, as, as you said, we need to go into the trenches and get them out. You know, we can't wait for them to try to climb their way out. I think it's so important that, like you said, early. On educate, prevention over intervention, you know? Mm-hmm. I, I think that's really important. So what would be your, your, I mean, what do you see with the future?
You know, you've got your book now, you've got Beacon for help, LLC, you're going around speaking. The goal, like you said, is to help at least one person every day. Are there any big future projects coming up? Well, I wanna be able to inspire other people to write a book. I mean, you're talking to a guy that failed English class.
That's why it took three editors to clean up my, yeah, clean up my meth. But everyone has a story that's worth sharing. And in the mental health industry, what I teach people that I work with, my fellow peers is journaling. Journaling is just simply writing down your thoughts. You don't have to have 'em organized, but it's a redirect back in your, in your back of the head where all that good feeling stuff, chemical sets, by redirecting it, balances you out, or taking some grounding techniques when you're experiencing a crisis, stop and close your eyes.
Get back in touch with your fi ve senses. Um, so my book, while I plan to do a worldwide tour and, and generate hopefully many paid speaking opportunities across the globe, is to work with people who want to learn. What their purpose in life is. Every one of us has a purpose. I mean, I'm sure 20 years ago you didn't think, oh, in 2025, I'm gonna be the podcast host of, of all this.
No. You've developed it and now through grace of God and everything else, your reward is a thousand fold paid back because you are reaching people's ears that really need to hear the message and my, my book, my my coaching of working with other people that
are in the same trenches as I have been. You know, my success is, yeah, a lot of years of hard work, but I'm still growing.
I'm still learning from other people. I still have mentors. I still associate myself with infl uencers that I believe, in my opinion, are going to. Help in my recovery process because I'm always in recovery. You know, once you've went down a, a substance disorder trail or a suicide trail, you're always in recovery.
You're not recovered. It don't matter. A hundred years from now, I haven't never thought about suicide. It doesn't mean I'm recovered, just means I have, I have resiliency built up strong enough. Shields out all that negative in my life. I don't let, I don't let one or two negatives control my thoughts and my heart and my soul and my mind.
And that's what my book, you know, it's designed in my involvement as the mental health director for the Department of Michigan VFW, that I have the honor every year by appointment, by the state commander. I've been, I've been acknowledged by several state commanders for actually saving a couple of people, a couple of veterans' lives.
They've, they've directly associated my time that I've taken to talk with somebody at an event. I haven't made it about myself. I've made it about what can I do in the moment for someone in crisis. You know, my supervisor, he, earlier today, this morning, we did supervision and he says, what is your greatest strengths?
And I had to think about it. And I thought my greatest strength is continuing the advocacy for veterans even after I retire in 24 days in a wake up. My greatest strength is continuing the journey of advocating for veteran benefi ts for myself, for my fellow comrades, to build stronger relationships with those that are s, that are actually right now hurting.
Life threw them the biggest curve ball that they never expected. And they don't have a a, a game plan. They don't have no backup plan of how to move forward because all they see is this right here, right? Their hands are in front of their eyes and they can't see forward right now. But that's what I hope to do, is to be able to.
For people to know that I'm transparent. I don't hide, I don't. I am the same person at home as I am at work. I don't try to be somebody special or anything. I just be myself, and that's how I've built my character, my trust, but more importantly, my resiliency. Has paid off a million fold just in the last few years, and that's what I look forward to doing is, is coming, coming to a town near you and meeting you in person and, and shaking your
hand, hand to hand as a shipmate and, and maybe, um, infl uencing other people to, um, more importantly, I don't want.
Another statistic. We know what happens, but if, if I can prevent another statistic from becoming a number, you know, I think of all the white crosses that'll be placed next month for suicide prevention month. As a reminder, those minimum 660 lives that are lost to suicide, I remember at a Ann Arbor va.
Hospital event. I stood in the center of those and recorded a video that I could have been one of those white crosses that we were paying respect to. And I thank God that it didn't happen and this is my purpose. And. If I can be of any assistance, um, in person on the phone, through Zoom, through teams, through my book, um, through standing on a stage, because I guarantee at that fi rst big event that I stand on the stage, I, I know for a fact that there's gonna be a minimum of 10 people in there that came in there thinking.
Today's it today, my eyes and my heart stop, and that's what I wanna change. Yeah, no, I, I completely agree with that, and I think a big takeaway, you know, never underestimate the power that you have to make a change, right? You know that no voice or story of. You know, attempt or awareness or prevention is, is too small.
You know, if, if you've been there and you've survived, please leverage it to help others, to prevent them from going through what you went through. And Mr. Brinker, I just wanna wholeheartedly thank you for the work that you do and as well as for guessing today. And we're gonna have your Facebook and your book in the description below for people to check out so they can connect with you and you know.
Set you up for those platforms to reach more people. But I really appreciate the work you do. You know, it's, it's work that is, like I said, it is a heavy topic. It is a somber topic, and it can be very emotionally draining, hearing all of these stories, working with all of these people and seeing all the hardship in the world.
So I really appreciate your resiliency in all that you do, and I appreciate the yeoman's work that you're doing. Shipmate because. We need more platform podcast individuals such as yourself because the more, the more boots on the ground, the more we're going to move that needle to the positive instead of from the negative.
You know, I remember, um, two years ago when the Pac, before the PAC Act got passed. 8,000 people at the VFW Convention was challenged to call the Washington
Switchboard. We shut that switchboard down by blowing it up with text messages and phone calls to our legislators. That's what it takes to move the needle.
It takes an army of individuals to stand up and say. I'm sick of it. We've been dealing with it for too long. It's time to do something positive about it.