00:00Hello, welcome to another episode of Perstitutionalist Podcast.
00:06I am your host, Joseph M. Leonard.
00:10That's L-E-N-A-R-D at the French.
00:13It's not, it's Leonard without an O.
00:17Thank you for tuning in, as Graham Norton used to say, on his show.
00:24Let's get on with the show!
00:26Welcome to Season 3, February.
00:31This special segment intro is for February specials.
00:37I'll be running two a week rather than one special a week on Wednesdays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays in February to get caught up on some of the interviews.
00:50And as Graham Norton currently says, he used to say, let's get on with the show!
00:57And I use that normally, but he uses now, and I'm going to borrow from him again.
01:02Let's get some guests on!
01:05Joining me today is going to be Omar Ritter.
01:09And I saw the movie Sheepdog.
01:13He deals in PTSD.
01:16So I thought, well, now's a great time to talk about that.
01:20But before I do, I owe Omar a public apology.
01:24We were supposed to record a couple days ago.
01:27And even though I'm a former IT guy dealing in computers and deals in military time all the time, all day, every day, dozens of times, I properly convert military time.
01:40But a couple days ago, I opened the Zoom room two hours early because I miscalculated military time.
01:49And I'm sitting there waiting for Omar, thinking, where is he?
01:55Where is he?
01:56Well, he wasn't supposed to be there until two hours later.
02:01I screwed up.
02:02My apologies, Omar.
02:04Oh, no problem, Joseph.
02:06I appreciate you having me on, Jay Leonard.
02:08So thank you.
02:11Yeah.
02:11You know, just one more proof.
02:14As I say, we're all human and flawed and frail and imperfect, can make mistakes.
02:21And I did.
02:22But unlike some, I'm looking at you, Kimmy Jimmel.
02:26I can own up when I screw up and apologize.
02:30So anyway, indeed, welcome to the show, Omar.
02:35Hey, thank you for having me.
02:37Glad to be here.
02:38Looking forward to the discussion.
02:39I saw the movie Sheepdog.
02:42Have you seen the movie?
02:44I've seen parts of the movie Sheepdog.
02:47And so it's, yeah, it's very, for me, it was very relatable to some of the things that I've gone through in my time.
02:57My terror strikes coming soon to a city near you book, partially dedicated to first responders and military, but survivors of casualty events like a 9-11 also can have survivor's guilt version of PTSD.
03:20Oh, for sure.
03:21So when people think PTSD, it's not limited to just military, yes?
03:29Correct?
03:30Yeah.
03:31And I think that's a great point, Joseph, because what people tend to do is they tend to measure your pain by their pain.
03:42And I would tell folks that never try to measure somebody else's pain by your own, because PTSD can actually occur from life or death events that happen to you, the individual, life or death events that happen to family members and friends that are close to you as well.
04:03So, you know, rape victims, assault victims, et cetera.
04:07People in a car crash accident can have PTSD.
04:12So we do a bad job of just relating it to military, and that's unfair to service members in some way, but also unfair to the general public who may have gotten into a predicament that gave them PTSD.
04:29And we need to recognize that, you know, we need to recognize that, you know, this illness, it's spread throughout our society, and it's not just limited to our men and women who served in the military or first responders, et cetera.
04:42Exactly.
04:43It's there in the name, but we don't really think post-traumatic stress disorder.
04:49That's right.
04:49Oh, there's many kinds of trauma that can trigger such things in people.
04:59Exactly.
05:00Exactly.
05:02What got you into, what, have you suffered it at all?
05:09Do you suffer it now, or do you have someone close to you?
05:14What got you into this concern?
05:17Yeah, so this is a, you know, great question.
05:22And so there's a couple things from me.
05:24So first of all, I'm an author, for those who don't know.
05:29And my book, West Point to Wall Street, My Journey to Mental Wellness, what my book talks about is, you know, my journey growing up, my journey going to West Point, joining the military,
05:43fighting in combat in Iraq, also serving in Kosovo on a peacekeeping mission where I saw some situations, but also I had 18 hours of brain surgery, emergency brain surgery that I didn't think that I was going to make it back from, right?
06:02And so for me, Joseph, my PTSD journey is a double-edged sword of both warfighting, but also the trauma at 27, 28 years old of thinking that I might not make it through this brain surgery.
06:20And then at the same time, learning how to walk again, talk again, having follow-up surgeries, et cetera.
06:28And from 28, 29 years old, I'm already thinking hardcore about how long do I have on this planet?
06:36And so as someone that's almost 50 years old, before I leave this planet, what I wanted to do is...
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