Thrust back into society with PTSD, we witness Ryan, Amber and Stuart trying to cope as civilians outside a war zone. | dG1fdlQ4RVI2WkcweUE
Category
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 [VIDEO PLAYBACK]
00:02 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:06 - If you take a lab rat and traumatize it and put it
00:09 in a cage by itself, you can maintain its trauma symptoms
00:12 almost indefinitely.
00:14 And if you take that same lab rat
00:16 and put it in a cage with other rats, after a couple of weeks,
00:19 it's pretty much OK.
00:20 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:23 - No one's ever done mainland Europe
00:24 to mainland North America.
00:25 It's nonstop and solo.
00:28 - I went straight from patrolling the most dangerous
00:31 city in the world to coming home and hugging my mom.
00:34 Just being injected into society was a liability to both myself
00:38 and those that I was around.
00:40 - I'm a veteran.
00:42 I'm a single mom with a mental health condition,
00:44 and my son has problems.
00:46 You should be helping me.
00:47 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:50 - Humans have evolved a way of adapting to trauma
00:53 so that they can continue to function.
00:54 In the short term, it's a healthy adaptation to trauma.
00:57 In the long term is where it earns
00:58 its D at the end, disorder.
01:00 - I've had a personality switch, but I
01:02 don't know how I've got here.
01:03 - If you're working as a sniper or a long range rifleman,
01:05 your job is to take out targets.
01:07 - I started Veterans Empowered to Protect African Wildlife,
01:10 training park rangers and conservationists
01:12 to not only protect themselves, but to bring these animals back
01:15 from the brink of extinction.
01:16 That gives me my brotherhood again.
01:17 In a unique way, I built that brotherhood back.
01:21 - No matter how much training you do,
01:23 no matter how often you stay out in your boat,
01:25 nothing prepares you for this.
01:27 - Sometimes the right thing hurts.
01:31 The best thing is sometimes the most painful thing.
01:35 - We're about 30 miles away from a really major shipping
01:39 lane in a boat you can't control with an injured float that's
01:42 meant to be rowing it.
01:43 - Modern society is hard on the human psyche by every metric
01:47 that we have.
01:48 Veterans are coming back.
01:50 No wonder they're depressed.
01:51 No wonder they're scared.
01:53 - This cycle has to be cut somewhere.
01:55 - It's an emergency, basically.
01:56 - We ask ourselves if we can save the vets.
02:00 I think the real question is if we can save ourselves.
02:04 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:08 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:11 (gentle music)
02:14 [MUSIC]