{"id":98992,"date":"2026-08-05T03:43:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T03:43:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/carl-david-on-see-through-the-darkness-solution-oriented-film-to-help-veterans\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T03:43:01","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T03:43:01","slug":"carl-david-on-see-through-the-darkness-solution-oriented-film-to-help-veterans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/carl-david-on-see-through-the-darkness-solution-oriented-film-to-help-veterans\/","title":{"rendered":"Carl David on See Through the Darkness: Solution-Oriented Film to Help Veterans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get Real’s<\/i><\/a> David DesRosiers sits down with documentarian Carl David to discuss See Through the Darkness, a new film exploring the struggles that many veterans and first responders face as they face post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide. David explains how personal loss inspired him to write the book that eventually became the documentary. The film highlights organizations such as the Grey Team, which works to address the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual challenges that can contribute to despair while rebuilding the sense of purpose and camaraderie that many veterans and first responders lose after leaving active service. Rather than simply documenting the problem, See Through the Darkness focuses on solutions. Showing help is available, your service matters, and your life matters. <\/p>\n

DAVID DESROSIERS, ‘GET REAL’ HOST: Welcome back to Get Real. I’m David DesRosiers. That was an enlisting worthy speech by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Many of those who hear the call and put their lives on the line come back with physical and mental scars that need tending. When they can’t, they result in suicide, which is a national shame. As the saying goes, war is hell. And that soldiers bring that hell home with them. A new documentary, See Through the Darkness, by executive directors Carl and Arlyn David, has done an amazing job of spotlighting veterans and first responders suffering from mental health issues like PTSD and more. That intervention leads soldiers out of depression and truly back home. Joining us is documentarian Carl David. Welcome, Carl. Suicide is personal to you, having lost a family member, which you’ve recently published a very good book on, Bader Field, How My Family Survived Suicide. Also, your love of American soldiers and law enforcement. In See Through the Darkness, these two came together so beautifully. And most importantly, in every good story, there’s a protagonist that slays the dragon. And what I loved about your movie is that most people give diagnosis and prognosis, but I think you really kind of showed the prescription to this, that there are therapies and networks and places that are doing great work, and you’re to be praised for honoring these people because we need to bring them to scale. Tell me about why you did this, what you think it offers. CARL DAVID: Well, I lost a brother to suicide when I was 16. He was Army, and this came out of the blue. We had no signs. There was no note afterward. We had no clue. We still live with a question mark. And this was in 1965. And I was a kid, and he was a kid. He was 22. And it really wreaked havoc with the family. We didn’t have a deal with it. I mean, first, there was the shock. Then there was sadness. Then there was grief. And then there was confusion. And like, well, what do we do now? Because we had no answers. Well, you know, we each got individual help. It took me five years of a psychoanalysis, four years, five days, sorry, four years, five days a week to get my head back straight. And I knew that someday I wanted to write a book. And I wrote this book, Bader Field, How Many Families Survived Suicide. And initially, it was rejected because it was two-dimensional. Nobody really got it. And one of the publishers who really saw the potential said, hey, we want you to rewrite it movie-style. All I heard was movie, and that was my end goal for the book. So I said, okay, great. Well, wait a minute. What’s movie-style? And they said, we want you to show it, not tell it. We’re going to give you an editor who will show you how to do it. She won’t tell it. And in six weeks working with this editor, I rewrote the whole book. It was missing dialogue, so the characters were flat. And after the dialogue came into being and the characters were talking to each other, it came to life. DESROSIERS: Well, Carl, if I could interrupt you. I’m here also to talk about that wonderful movie you made, too, that carries that book. So, I mean, could you \u2013 one of the things I liked about the thing is that you’ve really talked about the need for mental health, right, and the problem of suicide. But within your documentary, you really did find a prescription, something that is doing good work, the Gray Team. I believe we have a clip of them. I’d like to \u2013 yeah, I’d like to play it and then just talk about it for, you know, the few minutes we have left. DAVID: Gray Team evolved from a need to take away the things that actually will cause suicide. We got together. A friend of mine who was also transitioning out of the Green Corps, we kind of found a way to begin building our own pathway, if you will, knocking out all of the things that would cause someone to kill themselves, physical pain, mental pain, emotional pain, and spiritual pain. And at Gray Team, we’ve attacked each one of those four pillars, and we have the most high-tech facility that I’ve ever seen under one roof. So we’re able to treat the body and mind as a whole. And, of course, the missing element, which everyone faces when they get out of the military, and that’s camaraderie. We’ve found that we’ve put just over 1,000 people through our program since our inception in 2016, and we have never lost one to suicide. DESROSIERS: I mean, it’s great to see that soldiers coming to the aid of soldiers. I mean, you saw at the top of the block the conversation that I had with TurboVets. I mean, they’re focused on making sure that people are dealt with earlier and don’t have these suicide problems. But I loved how did Gray Team get on your radar screen? And tell us what you think about the soul of that effort and why it deserves support and attention. DAVID: Well, I met Cary when I was doing an art fair. I’m an art dealer by trade, and I was told they’ve got state-of-the-art equipment. You’ve got to come see it. So it piqued my interest. I went to see him down in Boca, and it was like, oh, my God, I cannot believe the technology that they have. And he said, we’ve never lost a vet to suicide. They’ve come here to get healed. They’re broken physically, they’re broken mentally, they’re broken spiritually and emotionally. So it really piqued my interest, and I said, hey, look, we’re working on the documentary. I want you in the film. I really need you because we need to have places that people can go to get healed. These soldiers, male, female, whatever, come back and they can’t unsee the horrors that they’ve seen. They can’t function. Sometimes they compartmentalize this stuff, and it becomes toxic, and they have no way to vent it because if they show their vulnerability, then they may get fired, they may get demoted, they may get sought out for psychiatric help. And it sometimes can ruin their lives because they’re afraid they’re going to be judged and they’re going to be put into a box that keeps them from moving forward. So we made this film with the hope that it’s going to save lives. I didn’t even want my experience to be in it, but it was the genesis of the film. And the rest of the film is focused on military and law enforcement because anybody who wears a uniform is a first responder. But these guys are our first-line defenders, and we need to be their protectors. They’re there for us. We need to be there for them. And they come back, and they need help, and they need a place to go. And Grey Team was one of the great fits, you know, because I saw what they actually do. I witnessed it. And they’re extraordinary. So this is part of my mission. My wife and I made this documentary with the help of Frank Benico from X’s and Sky Films to get this message out, that they’re not alone, there’s help for them, and that they need to know that they matter and that they’re needed. So that was the whole purpose of our film, and we hope it’ll save some lives. DESROSIERS: One of the things I also liked about what you were saying is the real need that there is for, you know, groups and efforts that are really kind of thinking outside the box on these things. I don’t know, did your film cover, like, hallucinogenics, psilocybin, and stuff like that? DAVID: Well, we mentioned that there are therapies now that are more acceptable and more legalized. Trump did a great thing by endorsing Ibogaine and some of the other psychedelics that, obviously, under medical supervision, they work. And I’ve got friends who have gone through those programs, and they’re much better now than they were before, and they’re not thinking about suicide anymore. DESROSIERS: No, no, we’re interested in it. I’ve been reading the work of Professor McNutt, Dr. McNutt. Carl David, thank you for joining us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

RealClearPolitics Videos<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Get Real’s David DesRosiers sits down with documentarian Carl David to discuss See Through the Darkness, a new film exploring the struggles that many veterans and first responders face as they face post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide. David explains how personal loss inspired him to write the book that eventually became the documentary. The film […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11023,10619,2564,1440,1793,30101,2588,9793],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98992"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98992\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}