Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Snrorry with
Speaker 2: you along with Daniel Brinkley, co founder of the Twilight
Speaker 2: Brigade again, a not for profit group that is dedicated
Speaker 2: to making sure no veteran dies along. Their website is
Speaker 2: the Twilight Brigade dot com linked up at Coast tocoastdam
Speaker 2: dot com. Danian, is the VA doing all it can
Speaker 2: for our vets? Is it getting any better?
Speaker 3: Well, we have to look at it from this point.
Speaker 3: This is an election you're coming, okay, And if we
Speaker 3: dislike for twenty seven years, put the information in the
Speaker 3: hands of the people and the veterans, then they have
Speaker 3: a knowledge of a reason why when you see your
Speaker 3: representative or you see these people on the campaign trail,
Speaker 3: we can make a difference. So what I've done every
Speaker 3: year is put together the worst and the best things.
Speaker 3: But when to answer your question straightforward, is this There
Speaker 3: are two studies. They say that seventeen to twenty two
Speaker 3: veterans kill themselves every day, and then there's another one
Speaker 3: that says thirty one a day. Well, in eighty six
Speaker 3: percent of these veterans have interacted with the VA or
Speaker 3: tried to find help, okay, And so when you look
Speaker 3: at that, then the system is failing. It is absolutely
Speaker 3: failing if these veterans are interacting and trying to find
Speaker 3: help with whatever they're going through and the system is
Speaker 3: failing them, because then they get depressed and they kill themselves.
Speaker 3: And at the rate that we're watching it happen. This
Speaker 3: is why everybody as war is building all around us,
Speaker 3: and we look at what the contract with the government
Speaker 3: is when you go and put your life on the line,
Speaker 3: and then to look at the last three from Vietnam
Speaker 3: forward to now and look at where we are, we
Speaker 3: have to do something. So how made a list of
Speaker 3: a couple of things are the worst parts about the VA,
Speaker 3: because there's also great things happening, the innovation of integrative
Speaker 3: and complementary medicine, and the VA is beating all goals.
Speaker 3: It's beating all standards across the metric of hospitalization therapy modalities.
Speaker 2: Has that changed? It wasn't that way thirty years ago,
Speaker 2: was it?
Speaker 3: Oh? My god, George? When I started member. When I started,
Speaker 3: they didn't have hospice. There was no hospice program. When
Speaker 3: I started in the VA, and the Tchi Bagage's training
Speaker 3: has now become the standard end of blafe care model
Speaker 3: in the Veterans Administration as no vet dies alone. And
Speaker 3: I was talking to Cheryl Turkilson. It was me, Sheryl Turkison,
Speaker 3: Thomas EAD's, Beth Clay of the International Chiropractors Association, all
Speaker 3: of us who came together to push this forward old
Speaker 3: health and integrative therapy. They you couldn't even say the
Speaker 3: word yoga. You couldn't say it. Okay. So now the
Speaker 3: standard end of life care model used by the Veterans
Speaker 3: Administration is the Parlett Brigade refined into now a standard
Speaker 3: the end of life care model. So I have succeeded
Speaker 3: in achieving that goal. Okay. So when you look at
Speaker 3: where we are now, the greatest, the worst thing that
Speaker 3: we have is the eh R, the electronic healthcare system.
Speaker 3: It's the worst thing in the world for whoever designed it, George,
Speaker 3: whoever designed it, did not care about the patient. They
Speaker 3: cared about records. So what's happening to doctors? And I
Speaker 3: have like twenty two different doctors that I know in
Speaker 3: different vas. So I asked them all the same questions,
Speaker 3: and so the system takes away from time and with
Speaker 3: the patient, with the veterans, it's worth that. Chasing down
Speaker 3: how to put a record together is so hard. You
Speaker 3: spend all of your time logging information and only have
Speaker 3: a couple of minutes with the vet trying to diagnose.
Speaker 3: This is horrible. The other thing that's really bad is
Speaker 3: they are not looking at They're not looking at what
Speaker 3: happens after war. I mean, they say they're doing it, okay,
Speaker 3: but when you look at.
Speaker 2: And that's one of the most critical things, isn't it.
Speaker 3: It's everything George, Why would we serve because we knew
Speaker 3: our backs were covered and you know, you work the system.
Speaker 3: I mean, the worst part. The other part that's the
Speaker 3: worst is the bureaucratic victims. They build bureaucratic systems that
Speaker 3: create obstacles. Like one doctor he said, look, I have
Speaker 3: to go through ten pharmacists to give a patient of prescription,
Speaker 3: and they all have to approve it because each one
Speaker 3: creates a rule or regulation so that they would be
Speaker 3: in charge of making the decision when the doctor's been
Speaker 3: a doctor for forty years, okay, And this is throughout
Speaker 3: the doctors different every type of doctor cardiologists and internists
Speaker 3: and surgeons, all of them tell me the same thing,
Speaker 3: and especially nurse. So this is stuff that we as
Speaker 3: the we as the people of the night, or we
Speaker 3: have coasted the coast, we have the power in the
Speaker 3: next year to stand up for our veterans. And that's
Speaker 3: why the like light streamers is where I house the
Speaker 3: toilet Brigade because now it's a government program. And I
Speaker 3: moved on to caregivers because the thing that's so great
Speaker 3: that I've watched happen, George, is caregivers have power and survivors.
Speaker 3: So before it was only just the veteran. Now it's
Speaker 3: the caregiver and they can get paid. They can they're
Speaker 3: gonna do the work anyway. They're gonna do it anyway,
Speaker 3: and why not get paid for it. Why not respect
Speaker 3: the caregiver? Because when you when they looked at the
Speaker 3: Iraq situation and after the Gulf War, which not nobody
Speaker 3: really got hurt, but you looked at when you came home,
Speaker 3: that parent became that parent, or that wife or that
Speaker 3: spouse or that friend became a caregiver, and something had
Speaker 3: to happen. So this has moved forward. I'll tell you
Speaker 3: something else. That's really cool, George. It's peer facilitators. During
Speaker 3: the COVID time, they had to create ways that people
Speaker 3: would normally come in for sessions and sit down and
Speaker 3: talk or that program. Well, they put them on the
Speaker 3: phone and they put them on a zoom call. Okay.
Speaker 3: Kathy Bixby at the Washington VA, I mean she pushed
Speaker 3: this program. She was hospice, but she pushed this program
Speaker 3: where guys could get on their phone, they could call
Speaker 3: in and have a peer facilitator. That means I unbat somebody.
Speaker 3: They're listening to their story, and everybody listeninging to everybody
Speaker 3: and interacting together to create that camaraderie that's so important.
Speaker 3: I mean, I see the opportunity for us because we
Speaker 3: have consisted. We've been doing this for twenty seven years. Okay,
Speaker 3: we've been doing this, and everybody who listens, I try
Speaker 3: to put together the smartest understanding of how to work
Speaker 3: the VA to get what you need. Okay. And it's
Speaker 3: the whole health program. The whole health program. If you're
Speaker 3: a caregiver and you're listening this, are you no one?
Speaker 3: Or you're a veteran and you're listening to this, or
Speaker 3: you no one. You tell them to go to the
Speaker 3: and look on the website at VA, at the VA
Speaker 3: slash va dot gov, slash wholehealth dot com and look
Speaker 3: at it because it's your gateway. And not only that, George,
Speaker 3: it's the opportunity to take back control of your life
Speaker 3: with Now you can say yoga, ichi, acupuncture, stretching, I
Speaker 3: mean a whole other world. I A practice, a whole
Speaker 3: other world of integrated therapies are happening in the VA
Speaker 3: because you have to treat the whole body. You have
Speaker 3: to treat that. And so my biggest issue is two things.
Speaker 3: The system is bureaucrats and the other system is the
Speaker 3: electronic healthcare system. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. And
Speaker 3: the other thing is tonight, in the two hundred and
Speaker 3: forty eighth anniversary of the.
Speaker 2: Marine Corps, of which you're a marine.
Speaker 3: Urrah, fifty thousand becans fifty thousand vecins will sleep on
Speaker 3: the street. No way, fifty to sixty thousand. I took
Speaker 3: the low side of the study, George.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: In Los Angeles, that's all they talk about is a thousand.
Speaker 3: Why there's eighteen thousand vectans on the street in Los Angeles?
Speaker 2: Crazy time.
Speaker 3: It's insane.
Speaker 2: It is insane. We need to take care.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you one of the issues within it, though, George.
Speaker 3: Here's one of the issues because I lived this every day.
Speaker 3: You know, I've been at this thirty seven years in
Speaker 3: the VA and I mean the hospital volunteer for forty
Speaker 3: five years, you know, in the VAF thirty four thousand
Speaker 3: dollars at the bedside, and I've been with over two
Speaker 3: thousand people at three hundred and fifty eight taking their
Speaker 3: last breath.
Speaker 2: There's a place for you in heaven, Danian. If they
Speaker 2: ever keep you, they keep throwing you.
Speaker 3: Back well, because I know you would miss me, George.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: So here's the other thing too. There's a thing called
Speaker 3: Operation Operation Patriot FOB OPFOB in South Carolina and it's
Speaker 3: finding purpose beyond beyond the call of duty. And they're
Speaker 3: trying to create camaraderies near the Marines, near Paris Island.
Speaker 3: And I want people to go to Lightstreamers dot com
Speaker 3: and then go to the Twilight Brigade under resources and
Speaker 3: look up, look up this op FOB OPFOB light Streamers
Speaker 3: Twilight Brigade, because these kind of organizations need our support,
Speaker 3: because these are veterans helping veterans peer to peter. The
Speaker 3: other thing that's so much important in integrated therapy, and
Speaker 3: this is another company I found. It's called Benefits USA, Okay,
Speaker 3: and they have a series of products that have to
Speaker 3: do with pain management, okay. And I want people to
Speaker 3: take a look at it, Light Streamers, Twilight Brigade Resources,
Speaker 3: and go in and look at it, because if you're
Speaker 3: in pain and it's a natural way, let's see if
Speaker 3: it works for you. The other thing is we need
Speaker 3: to support the OPFOB. I mean, this needs to be
Speaker 3: supported because these kinds of programs, George, are the things
Speaker 3: that's gonna make a difference in the lives of efans.
Speaker 3: And when you come in contact with a congress person
Speaker 3: or anybody that's running for office next year, these talking
Speaker 3: points are gonna make the difference.
Speaker 2: Sure, how bad is PTSD.
Speaker 3: Well, you've got to be able to separate the concept
Speaker 3: of PTSD from traumatic brain injury, Okay. And it's horrible.
Speaker 3: It's horrible, and some of it is caused. Georgia is
Speaker 3: the thing that made me got me really bad because
Speaker 3: I heard these stories of guys they're ops people. Because
Speaker 3: I know, you know, I know everybody. They're ops people.
Speaker 3: And they were doing a special op in Syria, okay,
Speaker 3: and it was a marine battalion. And these guys came
Speaker 3: back and they were a howardzer battalion and then they
Speaker 3: were firing one hundred pounders okay, fifteen miles and they
Speaker 3: so many of these twenty two of them came back
Speaker 3: and they were having visions and hearing voices, and they
Speaker 3: were seeing dead people. And one had this little girl
Speaker 3: that stayed with him all the time. Okay, And I said,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, wait a minute, what could possibly They
Speaker 3: thought they were hecks. They thought that some of the
Speaker 3: stories that they were told, because when you're firing a howitzer,
Speaker 3: you're filing at twelve to fifteen miles, and you don't
Speaker 3: never see a combat. You don't ever see one. But
Speaker 3: when these guys started having this, they ruled it PTSD,
Speaker 3: but it was traumatic brain injury, okay. And when guys
Speaker 3: wouldn't follow along the system and take the drug protocols
Speaker 3: that they have so they could classify it under the
Speaker 3: numbers that they could use so that they could fill
Speaker 3: it up in their records, as opposed to paying attention
Speaker 3: to what they're saying when you fire a howitzer maybe
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty five. You got one hundred pounder.
Speaker 3: The percussion, George of when you pull that, when you
Speaker 3: pull that lever and it fires, there is a percussion
Speaker 3: wave that comes backwards. I mean, anybody's ever been in
Speaker 3: a blast zone.
Speaker 2: Those incredible, isn't it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean it moves through every muscle, every bone,
Speaker 3: every organ. I mean it shatters you. And then you fire,
Speaker 3: and then you at firebase and then you fire four hours.
Speaker 3: Look at what you're doing. So it's got to be
Speaker 3: traumatic brain injury. So in separating those two things, look
Speaker 3: at PTSD, which is a protocol they use. And I'll
Speaker 3: tell you something about PTSD, George. It has a lot
Speaker 3: to do with guilt. I mean traumatic brain injury comes.
Speaker 3: I mean PTSD post traumatic stress syndrome comes from things
Speaker 3: that when you get away from it and you don't
Speaker 3: have the camaraderie of your team, and you don't have
Speaker 3: the safety of you all supporting each other, and you're
Speaker 3: all by yourself having to face yourself and what happens
Speaker 3: in combat and in war you're killing tens of thousands
Speaker 3: of people. You cannot walk away from that. And when
Speaker 3: you look at today. You look at today and where
Speaker 3: we are is the United States of America, and when
Speaker 3: what's going on? And where we have? You know what
Speaker 3: the first thing I would ask myself was, is the
Speaker 3: president administration refilling the Strategic ore Reserve? That is the
Speaker 3: only question I would ask the President of the United
Speaker 3: States today?
Speaker 2: Why is that?
Speaker 3: Because if you don't have the fuel to convert to
Speaker 3: run operation, which is diesel, what happens to climate change
Speaker 3: in a war? George, what happens? Climate change goes out
Speaker 3: the window? And you know, it doesn't matter anymore because
Speaker 3: the diesel fuel and killing and murdering and destroying and
Speaker 3: all the stuff that creates CO two and all those
Speaker 3: stories that we hear about that. Then what happens if
Speaker 3: we don't have the fuel, If we don't have the
Speaker 3: fuel to fight a war, we won't be fighting it. Okay.
Speaker 3: So when people start to really look at this, are
Speaker 3: those reserves being refulled today? And are we pumping in
Speaker 3: America to make sure that we get to at a
Speaker 3: price that we can afford to pay? And George, look
Speaker 3: we're at right now to the United States. We are
Speaker 3: we don't have a budget, we haven't had a budget
Speaker 3: like ten or twelve years, But we don't have a budget.
Speaker 3: We're having continuous resolution right now and it's got to
Speaker 3: be done by what Monday or are the government shuts down?
Speaker 3: Hello everybody? Okay, So if there's ever a chance that
Speaker 3: we're going to make a difference, it's now. And if
Speaker 3: we ever were safe enough to look at where we are,
Speaker 3: we don't have a choice. The thing that I have
Speaker 3: comfort in, George is you already know the boxes of
Speaker 3: knowledge and save by the light and from the You know,
Speaker 3: everybody doesn't know that. But when I put it in
Speaker 3: that book, it was if they were brave enough to
Speaker 3: put this stuff on me and I had to come
Speaker 3: back and take two years to learn to walk and
Speaker 3: feed myself. Then when I was going to tell the story,
Speaker 3: either what they had given me as became future events,
Speaker 3: what they had given me either reinforced the fact that
Speaker 3: there was life after death already did not. These are
Speaker 3: not Danien predictions. These are what they said. And when
Speaker 3: Paul and I sat down we put it in boxes.
Speaker 3: All I asked anybody to do is just go look
Speaker 3: at it and see what I missed. What did they miss? Okay?
Speaker 3: Then the reality for me it's that there's life after death.
Speaker 3: And I've helped contribute to the concept. I've been going
Speaker 3: through all the crap that I've been through, I've contributed
Speaker 3: to the concept. So where the toilet Brigade came from?
Speaker 3: Was it you come to a place in this event
Speaker 3: when you see your life pass before you in a
Speaker 3: three hundred and sixty degree you watch it from a
Speaker 3: second persons point of view as though you were your
Speaker 3: own best friend, and then you literally become every person
Speaker 3: that you ever encountered, and you feel the direct results
Speaker 3: of your interaction between you and that person. And this
Speaker 3: is a Danianism. But then you ask a question, if
Speaker 3: God couldn't come today and God sent you and the
Speaker 3: life you just reviewed, what difference did you and God make? Well,
Speaker 3: lying in that bed for eleven or twelve months and
Speaker 3: getting up the walk again. The difference that I could
Speaker 3: make is go die with marines. That was the difference
Speaker 3: I could make, because I'd already been where they're going
Speaker 3: to go, and I have so much knowledge of what
Speaker 3: marines and what combat and what people go through. And
Speaker 3: so if God couldn't come to and God sent me,
Speaker 3: and then when it came time to do this book,
Speaker 3: which is like eighteen years later. It was because I
Speaker 3: looked at where Raymond was and I saw that how,
Speaker 3: I mean, how trying so hard to descend something he
Speaker 3: did a study on. I mean he studied it. He
Speaker 3: was a philosopher. And I watch what happened, and I
Speaker 3: just said, Okay, let's put it out there. So I've
Speaker 3: been out here every day since then.
Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
Speaker 1: one am Eastern, and go to Coast to coastam dot
Speaker 1: com for more