> welcome to "ammanpour and company" western democracies besieged by extremes, from violence on the streets of france to paralyzing political infighting in britain to divided government in the united states. can the center hold against this rising tide of nationalism? former greek finance minister tells me about his plan to build a progressive wave. then iconic fashion designer stella mccartney who says luxury designers and fast fashion must unite to save the environment. plus, shell shock, the

emotional war that soldiers face even after coming home from the front.

welcome to the program, everyone. i'm christiane amanpour in london. the leaders of europe's three biggest democracies and economies are reckoning with populist upheavals while the united states faces a divided government. it seems like the only thing uniting the west these days is division with little room for centrist voices or bipartisan crow mie compromise. teresa may has had a vote of no confidence triggered by members of her own party who want a hard brexit. she had to vow not to leave her party to the next general election similar to angela merkel who was forced to

nominate her successor as party leader after 1 ye8 years. the french president has been rocked by the violent yellow vest protests described by the government as symptomatic of malai malaise. why now, why are these political extremes so pervasive? my next guest is launching his own global counter movement while also running to become a member of the european parliament. he's the former greek finance minister who resigned in 2015 amid contentious debt negotiations at the time with the eu. he's joining me now from athens. welcome to the program. >> thank you. >> i brought up 2015.

it seemed that you couldn't go aday without hearing about brexit and a potential greek default and chaos in your land and across europe and reverberating all over the world. and here we are nearly four years later, brexit is in chaos but it's happening. these pop yu but it's happening. these pop ylist and extreme wavs of nationalism seem to be the order of the day way beyond greece. you were pretty prescient back then. >> in 2008, we, our generation, experienced our version of 1929. very soon the world ceased to make sense in terms of what was conventional wisdom up until very recently. our regimes, our liberal establishment to put it this way

pretended that business could connell continue as usual. in order to pretend that business could continue as usual, to shift, pain, holoss, debt onto the shoulders of the weakest of citizens especially in the european union but also in the united states. very soon you had discontent. >> people would potentially describe the extreme right and the extreme left as being these sort of political monsters, if you like. they're gobbling up any sense of a centrist future, any sense that you can even find a majority for anything and a consensus to make policy. so you have described the threat from this nationalism and this populism and you are launching

dm 25, which you hope to be a progressive international, a progressive wave to counter this mostly extreme right nationalism. can you explain how you plan to do that? and what is dm 25. >> it's an crow anymore for the democracy in europe movement. we are also using the exultation c carpe diem, seize the day because we need to seize the day. here in europe we have a domino effect, takeovers of our politics by extremists of the right, soxenophobes. what we are trying to do is to take one brilliant idea from

franklin roosevelt's administration in 1933, from the new deal. and that simple idea is to utilize, to find smart ways of utilizing iing idle cash, idle money into the good quality jobs that can uniquely quell the discontent caused by the fact that most people can see that their children are not going to have as good a life as they did. and press this idle cash into service in order for green transition, green technologies, green energy, green transport systems. that basic idea which in a sense allowed the united states in 1933 onwards to avoid the decline of europe, the degeneration of europe at the same time into a kind of fascist

equilibrium. that is an idea we want to salvage from that period, to bring it to europe and indeed to internationalize it if we can so as to counter at a nationalist level both the failures of the globalization establishment that caused the crisis of 2008 and the political representation of the extremists who are now taking over one country after the other. >> okay. let's take one country after the other. let's start with france, where we've seen the most violent manifestation of this discontent. and you have what many in the liberal democratic sort of moderate kind of center saw as a beacon of hope, the election of president macron, who defeated precisely the voice of nationalism and extremism in

marine la pen on the right. now wea've had these massive protests. we simply don't know if the president is going to placate them. first of all, do you agree with this demonstration of discontent? and what will it take? because they want more social services, more help from the state and less taxes. how does this progressive wave that you envision work in the face of these demands? >> well, i think it is important to answer that question using what president macron has himself said, not very recently but before he moved -- when he still a cabinet. i remember him saying that there has to be reforms in france, but at the very same time, unless we have a federalist reform of the

eurozone, of the way the european union is conducting its business, unless there is a common budget, a federal treasury of sorts in europe, unless we have a proper banking union so we end the pretense that we can have national banging systebang ing -- banking systems without treasuries. he himself, president macron, predicted without these moves toward federalism, toward serious eurozone reform, the center cannot hold. and the european union, he said, would be dismantled. that was emanuel macron. he gets elected and he puts forward an agenda for eurozone reform which was very moderate and quite sensible. but the way in which he tried to carry out was a two phase negotiation with berlin. phase one, he would germ-ize fran --

german-ize france and go to mrs. merkel and say, okay i germanized france. let's have a federal eurozone. he germanized france. he made it easier for employers to fire workers. he increased taxes for the poor and reduced them for the rich. and then when he put forward the proposals for reforming the eurozone, which for him were absolutely essential necessary preri prerequisites mrs. merkel said no and very soon after that she lost power. the explanation is the center is not holding because we are not consolidating the european union's economy the way that even mr. macron, who is more moderate that i am in his politics, had specified as absolutely necessary and essential. >> let me put the little devil's advocate then to you.

some economists do believe that some of the reforms he did put forth have actually produced results, the labor reforms and others. and the question here is that some also saw not a galloping french economy but a move toward the french economy doing a little bit better and predictions it would continue to do better if the reforms continue. the same in germany, a still galloping the economy. in britain the economy doing really, really well. in united states the economy doing really well. yet this malaise against the government. so if this is the result when the economies are going well, what happens when they go really badly if you predict that to be potentially the case down the line? >> well, i think the key to understanding what's going on and answering your question is

to look at these economies and manage to discern the fact that they're not uniform. you talked about germany. germany is indeed swimming in cash. it is swimming in surpluses. everybody seems to be having surpluses. the federal government is in surplus. there is a majestic gigantic trade surplus that donald trump is targeting. the corporations are saving money and their households have savings. and yet and this is a great paradox, half of the german population are far worse off today than they were 15 years ago. similarly, you spoke about france and their reforms. yes, it is true that macron made business easier to conduct in france. but at the same time he introduced austerity which was exported from countries like greece into france and that created whole regions in france

that resembled greece, in other words areas of great depression. it is in those areas that the movement of the yellow vests emerged before descending upon the streets of paris. you mentioned the united kingdom. why did brexit succeed? it did not succeed because of some deep -- like cattle that lost their market value. they felt discarded. they felt completely disenfranchised from a london based economy which was, as you said, expanding very rapidly while large sections of the population are being left or held behind. this is the issue here. divisions within our countries and between our countries

growing while statistics at the macro level seeming to be prospering. so you have effectively national statistics about prospering and large portions of the population that are being discarded. >> so now let me put this notion of division and nationalism and populism to you in this context. steve bannon, president trump's election campaign genius, whiz who helped him win the election has, as you know, been in europe trying to round up all these extreme right nationalist parties and elements into what he called the movement to contest most particularly the upcoming european elections in may of next year. this is what he says about his movement. >> the baegt heart eating heart globalist project is in brussels. i drive a stake through the vampi vampire.

the whole thing will start to dissipate. we'll call it the movement or the cause or something like that. everything converges in may of 2019. that's literally when we take over the eu. >> that is pretty frank and rather chilling talk, actually, from a directly against his movement? >> listening to steve bannon sends a shiver down my spine, because while nobody can accuse me of being uncritical toward brussels and the european union, this disintegration nationalist narrative is what is going to lead to a great deal of pain being inflicted upon a majority of people in a majority of countries in europe. this coalescence of nationalists is looking to disintegrating the

european union. the result being a dystopia. the result being a genuine post modern version of the 1930s. yes, dm 25 or democracy in europe movement, while being very critical of the european establishment, we're going to fight steve bannon in every realm with a european humanist narrative, one that seeks to bring together the peoples of europe, not to divide them and to disintegrate them. >> i wonder if you think you will succeed, whether you are optimistic about the challenge you have at hand. in particular, i want to ask you about one of the biggest rallying calls and cries to these nationalists is the issue of immigration. the hungarian foreign minister talked to me about this. they just do not want practically anybody except for white christians to come in.

you know the u.n. migration charter pretty much failed in ma marrakesh. listen to what the hungarian foreign minister said about this central issue to me when we spoke in september. >> my question is, what is the legal or moral ground for anyone to cross to violate a border between two peaceful countries? these people came through serbia, croatia, macedonia, bull g bulgaria, grease turkey. you don't wake up in the morning and pick a country you would like to live in and in order to get there you violate series of borders. >> there's a lot to question there. but nonetheless you get your point. what does your movement seek to do to address --

fear and loathing around migration today? >> you will recall that hungary was a communist country and lots of hungarian democrats fled the country and sought refuge by crossing borders. indead when the regime collapsed, we opened up our borders to hungarians, to the czechs and so on. that is the fundamental basis of a democratic europe, that we feel stronger when we bring border fences down, not when we erect them. but you asked me whether i'm optimistic. i do believe very strongly that when it comes to politics, when it comes to fighting for democratic rights and humanism, we don't have the right to issue prodiction

predictions. we have simply to expect that hope is going to be the fuel that drives the success in the end. >> we will be watching. thank you so much for joining us from athens. so as we were discussing centrist politics are kind of out of vogue. of course in the fashion world, it rarely pays to stand in a crowd. when it comes to the environment and climate, however, some of the world's biggest fashion houses are finally gathering under one roof. dozens of leading brands and designers have signed a charter which was unveiled at the united nations climate conference in poland this week. aimed at fighting climb change and curbing greenhouse gasses by the fashion industry which is among the world's biggest polluters. at the forefront of this movement is stella mccartney, the highly respected british designer who's following in the footsteps of her parents who are both animal rights activists. she has forged her own cutting edge brand of sustainable fashion.

stella, who's been designing since she was 11, told me about the ambitious new targets when she came to the studio this week right after taking part in a bloomberg climate event here in london. stella mccartney, welcome to the program. >> thank you for having me. >> so i never knew that the fashion industry was the second biggest polluter in the world. how does that happen? walk us through how polluting your business is. >> oh my goodness, well, basically it starts at the very beginning. so the sourcing of all the materials and the supply chain, the manufacturing, it's just filled with really old fashioned manufacturing skills. viscose rayon basically comes from ancient forests, cutting down trees. 150 million will be cut down this year. plastics, the oil that is used in so many fabrics, the chemicals used. leather is cutting down forests,

it's using water inefficiently. >> let me read a few of the statistics that you mentioned and then we'll talk about the solutions. in terms of plastics, the report says one garbage truck of textiles is wasted every second, less than 1% of clothing is recycled into new clothes. nothing has changed the industry will consume about a quarter of the world's annual carbon budget by 2050. cashmere takes so much environmental damage, cotton causes so much environmental damage. what can you do to change that dynamic and what are you doing? because you are the leader in this part of the sustainable development. >> if i can do it, anyone can do it. you have to ask questions and start at that starting point of basically agricultural farming. cotton is one of the materials i

use the most but i use organic cotton. i look at row gene at regenerat. the soil holds twice as much carbon in it as the atmosphere. if we release that, we are screwed. i'm very mindful of how i treat my fellow creatures. the reality is i don't use any leather or fur. i don't use any animal glues or chemicals that are involved in that. that has the biggest positive impact personally in my business on the environment. it's basically connecting all of the dots, working together, a sick la circular economy. when you talk about the landfill, we can't actually accommodate that anymore. it's not a sustainable business model. over 500 billions worth of waste is being lost. that is for me a business opportunity. >> hit's unpack some of that. the landfill, you showcased your

latest collection in 2017 in a landfill to highlight the issue. what were you saying? what do you home the impact would be? >> i wanted to sort of try and keep it light at the same time. i think it's really important at stella mccartney to have the tone of voice that doesn't completely terrify everybody. try to keep a sense of humor and hope. so i shot in a landfill. it seemed like a great idea at the time. then i had to find a landfill in the first place that would let me shoot in it. there was only one. it was in scotland, sadly for scotland. it's not an industry that people are particularly proud of or that they actually want to show. i think that kind of contrast between fashion and the lack of glamour in the landfill was of interest to me. the massive part of the shoot was a dust bowl, speaking of soil, speaking of overfarming and just raping the soil of its nutrients which is what we do.

you had to wear masks, it stank. it was really horrific to be there. >> a real landfill. >> this is not what i signed up for when i wanted to be a fashion designer. then we had one area where we did clean rubbish, which is the recycling. only 2% of plastics are recycled, 1% of fashion, as you say. it was a very small area on the shoot. we're kind of led to believe that we are recycling, but the statistics are really tiny and we have to make change. >> did you ever think that your world, your life would be as much designing as being a science lab? i mean you recreated yo e ed yoe store and you're constantly looki looking new materials.

>> the other thing that really inspires me is the future of fashion, looking at all of those problems that we face and what we contribute negatively to the environment and using technology as a solution. i work with tons of new environmental technologies looking at growing leather in laboratories. i work with a company in san francisco that was basically making spider silk in labs. i have clean air in my store in london where it's 98% filtered and sort of amazing. just looking at the technology of fashion i find really sexy and trying to make sustainability something you're not sacrificing in order to be fashionable. i think educating people is critical but also giving people information because the consumer really counts. >> you come at it with such passion, but also it's in your dna. it's very well known their the daughter of paul mccartney and linda mccartney. she was the pioneer that brought

vegetarianism and animal cruelty to the public conscious, fighting against that. what was it like being her daughter, living and growing up with that and also actually watching her be a little bit ridiculed and attacked for those positions all those years ago? >> it's never easy doesn't matter who your parents are, you want to protect them and you want them to feel safe. yeah, she definitely got a lot of ridicule, a lot of anger pointed at her because of her belief system in trying to save animal's lives really and educate people. there was a veggie burger in this country until she came along. that was really borne out of her desire to save animal's lives. that brought me an awareness and a consciousness. it made me see you can be

fearless and make change if you have a passion. we really believe this in our family. i've seen the same things in me. i've been ridiculed for the majority of my career as a fashion designer in luxury and not use leather and not use fur and sort of challenge the future of fashion and the way in which we work in an unsustainable way. i'm kind of the freak of the fashion industry. but now i can have this conversation, so i see change. i'm incredibly proud of everything that mum did and how she inspired me to do what i do and my dad. >> did he get it from her or was he inclined? >> i'd like to think it was a group effort. >> you are not a freak. you are actually on the cutting edge. you might know that l.a., the whole city of l.a. has just banned the sale of new fur. gucci, calvin klein, armani also going fur free. so are young people, they are

really concerned. you also say you were kind of ridiculed at the very beginning. you were at first known as paul mccartney's daughter. how difficult was it to forge your own way and your own platform and your own cutting edge view of design and materials? >> you know, it wasn't easy. every interview i started out doing was with a little help from her friends and it was sort of beatle headline driven. i had to justify my place within the industry. i had to prove i had a validity. that makes sense. you know, i get it. i trained to be a fashion designer. i did similar training that every other fashion designer i know did. i was interning at 15. it was my passion. i was very committed. but i think that add the et the the day, my grandfather used to say staying power. first i was paul and linda's daughter. then i was the sustainable kuin

of weirdo. i think creativity is at the core of everything. i don't think i'd be sitting here talking to you if i was making hemp handbags. but at the end of the day you have to have -- i have a great team of people and i think we create beautiful desirable products and dwroi don't think n even open a conversation with someone like you on this type of platform unless i have something at the core of it in a creative way. >> you studied at the correct stores, you interned and then you took over chloe at a very young age from the great karl lagerfeld. this is what he said. chloe should have taken a big name. they did, but in music not in fashion. let us hope she's as gifted as her father. wow. >> how great.

you know what, it's kind of hilarious too. >> how much have you increased the profit? did you increase the profit? >> at least 600% in a very short period of time. you know what, i'm very happy to be here listening to that quote. >> again, you were 11 years old. this is all part of the sustainable fashion legend. you were 11 years old when you made your first design and it was a pink fake suede bomber jacket. at 11? >> yeah. >> what did you know about fake suede? >> i found it really interesting because basically most upholsteries are made from fake suede. you can wash them. things like that i found interesting even then. i now work with fake suedes all the time. they're biodegradable.

every single day i'm questioning the sort of same ten materials that the fashion industry has been using for hundreds of years. i'm challenging it and i think that's part of the creative process now for me. >> what about women? you say you don't only create for women and you're constantly looking to make them beautiful and professional and also affordable, but don't you have a massive percentage of your employees are women? >> yeah, like 80%. not intentionally. i don't know. we kind of joke that the men are -- where are the men? >> do you ever worry with all this mayhem, that brexit might affect your very particular supply chains? you have sustainable forests in sweden, they're mulched in germany, the that he hread is m italy. are you worried about the supply lines? >> it's certainly a topic of

conversation that we're looking at. on a very base level those over 80% women employees are from all around the world. we have to safeguard and look at all of the implications from brexit. >> finally, one of the things we haven't really talked about is to foek to focus on the animal cruelty aspect of being a vegetarian, of not using real leather. your mother said, if slaughter houses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian. >> how ahead of her time was she? there's a lot of challenges, there's a lot of bodies that have power and money and financing behind them, the fur industry, they can challenge a fake fur and say it's more natural to have a fur. if it was more natural, fur would biodegrade. the reality is that the core of that is animal welfare.

and the mass slaughter of billions of animals in the name of fashion. >> at the end of the day you are a businesswoman. you run a fashion empire and therefore profit is very important to your business but also to your consumers. what do you say to people who say, well, all of this sustainability is just great, but it jacks up the price? at stella mccartney, what do you do with your margin? >> we stuck it into our margins. at the core of why i'm doing this it's because it's my core principle and value system. i can't put that onto my consumer and i'll price myself out of the market. i'm in a very privileged position that at the core of everything for me, if everything goes horribly wrong, i can go home and go can you look after me. and i know that and i see that as a privilege. it's enabled me to sort of not compromise my ethics. but i think one of the main things to talk about there is i

should be incentivized. when i take nonleather i could be hit with a 30% taxation because it's not real leather. that's got to be a medieval law. it should be the opposite. it could be incentivized for people to do better business and be less harmful to the planet. >> on that note it is cutting edge and you are staking out a position. you talk about the united states where the current government called climate change a hoax and doesn't believe it's man made. so it is actually edgy and quite brave and economically successful. that is a lesson. >> hopefully it's the future. >> hopefully. stella mccartney, thank you very much. >> thank you so much for having me. and now we turn to a tough issue that affects many servicemen and women and of course their families. on average, 20 american soldiers

are lost to suicide every day. a new documentary series "the war within" tells the story of three retired veterans. one is an iranian refugee who came to america when she was 12. she decided to enlist. after returning from afghanistan she struggled with ptsd. >> tell me what is "the war within" series? what are you trying to accomplish? >> focusing on the experiences of three different veterans who have all been coping with ptsd over the past several years. one, i'm hoping that civilians will watch their stories and understand a little bit more about the lingering effects of war and how it can often stay with soldiers for the remainders of their lives. and the second is really to reach out to people who might be

experiencing ptsd or mental illness themselves so they can benefit from hearing these stories. >> you are one of the people that she profiles. for our audience, tell us a little bit about your background. >> thank you. thank you so much for having me. i'm an iranian-american. we moved here with my mother and my brother in 1993. my family emigrated to the united states prior to us moving here. however, he was killed in a plane crash a few months before we arrived. so it was me, my mom and my brother. we kind of started over after my father was a political activist in iran against the islamic regime and he was a political prisoner for a while. so we found ourselves all alone for the most part of my childhood and my mom raised us as much as she could and took care of us with the family. >> what made you want to join

the army? >> as an immigrant i feel like you sort of become an idealist. it just depends on how america was presented to you when you first arrived. america was presented to me as exactly what it truly is, the land of opportunity, the land of the free. i was so moved by the 2008 election. i sort of became obsessed with the idea of working for president obama. i admired him. i looked at him and i wanted to be just like him. whenever i looked at him on television or listened to his speeches, i felt like he represented the best of america and that is what i believed at the time and started campaigning for him. then after the election, once the economy crashed, instead of taking a break from the entertainment industry, i felt this would be a perfect time to serve. in my own little bubble, idealistic bubble i wanted to

say that i worked for barack obama one day. >> through the military. >> he was the commander in chief. >> right. you were a green card holder at the time and you volunteered. what role did you play? >> i went in as a logistical specialist. once i obtained my citizenship they cross trained me four months later to become an intelligence analyst where i utilized my language skills to teach farsi to infantry soldiers and officers. >> you also have stories of two other veterans. i want to take a look at a clip. >> august 31st, 2010, my vehicle hit an i.e.d. that led to a fracture in my lower back and a traumatic brain injury. i was diagnosed with narcolepsy and ptsd. the bomb goes off every single

day. i didn't do it to be a better american. i did it because i didn't want to be in debt over my head once i graduated from college. i met a recruiter. he said they've got loan forgiveness, they've got the g.i. bill. i'm going to put you in a nondeployable unit. that's not how the army works. >> he talks about how, quote, there's only so much rage you can bottle up. how does this play out in his real life with his family, with his child? >> when he came back from afghanistan he was dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic brain injury and part of that manifested in narcolepsy which he still has. he had headaches and with the ptsd he'd experience very extreme anger. one of his triggers was the sound of crying.

a few months after he came back from afghanistan he had a baby. so that was -- >> a little bit of crying involved. >> that was a difficult period for him and for his girlfriend and for them as a family. he eventually was able to finish college and moved out to the farm that we just saw in the clip and he found a lot of therapy and solace in that farm and in that space where he could feel safe, he could feel like he could control his environment, which is really important. and he is still with his girlfriend. he's now kind of becoming the father that he always wanted to be. he says he's making up for lost time. it's really amazing to see them as a family connecting. his son is 7 years old now. >> i want to hear a little bit about the kinds of stresses that you experienced when you got to afghanistan versus what you prepared for when you actually got there and you were in the

theater. what was it like? >> well, prior to my leaving to afghanistan we were told that this particular mission, this nine months of deployment is not going to involve leaving the wire. >> meaning being in a compound. >> not being out. my boss is very open minded. he was an excellent intelligence officer. i told him knowing the fact that i'm a neutral gender, i can speak to women and men and i don't need an interpreter and i'm armed they're going to have me run missions so we need to prepare for this. physically and mentally we were ready but i think there was this little emotional aspect of it. i think there is a mental readiness, physical readiness and emotional readiness. when they keep telling you you're not going to do something, you start believing it. we hit the ground running immediately. i mean, we started just working

with the unit that was leaving. soon i found out that we are going to be going outside the wire, especially there was high demand for my skill. >> what happened the first time you were under attack? >> we were attacked every day. and the first time was the second day that i arrived in afghanistan. this is something that most people don't acknowledge. indirect fire is one of the most traumatizing events in the theater. although i ran 85 missions in 275 days outside of my compound, but inside the compound, you are constantly under attack. >> what happens to your brain when you're in a situation where you hear the sound of it coming but you don't really know where it's going to hit? >> i think the first time i was able to utilize my training, you know, hit the ground, do what

you need to do, but after the second or third time you start thinking today's the day. today's the day that i'm going to die in afghanistan. and after a couple of weeks when you start learning that somebody's throat got cut by shrapnel on a flight line or a pilot had a rocket last on his chest the day before he was taking his first flight and the day after he had arrived from the united states, after that those indirect fires are no longer indirect in your mind. i think they have a tendency to inject a sense of trauma and it's daily and it's more than once a day. sometimes we were rocketed five to 12 times. >> are you seeing any commonalities in how these three different people that have very different experiences, how are their brains different?

if you lived through something like to this or some of the other things they describe in your documentaries, is there some sort of change that's happened to them that would be visible to civilians? >> we talk a lot about invisible wounds with this series. that's actually a challenge for me as a film maker to film something that we can't see. it's one of the contributions to the stigma surrounding mental illness, is that you can't see it. so it manifests in different ways. that depends on the complex personalities of each of the individuals. with davon it manifested in anger and extreme irritability. with scott it's depression. >> i want to ask, what did you expect when you were coming back home? and compare that to what actually happened.

>> i think our experience kind of splits in trhree sections. first you don't want to be there, then you start getting comfortable and by the time it's time to come home, you don't want to. so when i was coming back, i was already nostalgic about my environment. and i remember my boss telling me no matter what you do for the rest of your life, it will never compare to what you did here, the contributions you made. so when i was coming back, i was already sad. when we were in romania i was happy that i was coming home, but i was starting to feel depressed. however, that sense of vigilance that you maintain throughout deployment is still with you so it doesn't manifest, the depression and anxiety doesn't manifest until you get back state side. once i got here, i don't even think it took more than a week, because my mom and my brother came to visit me about 11 days after i arrived and their

two-week visit turned into three days. >> why? >> they just couldn't be around me. i couldn't -- i couldn't function like a normal person. >> what do you mean? >> we went to a restaurant and i wanted to eat and leave and we couldn't even stay and have a good time because i just wanted to eat the food and leave. i had no sense of purpose and i wanted to just rush through the day. so that became an issue. i was bothered by every sound. i remember my brother was playing something that was so beautiful from rumi, which is he is a poet and persian philosoph philosopher, but the language bothered me so much i immediately thought it was arabic and i came downstairs and started screaming that i just came back from afghanistan and i

don't need to hear this in my house. three days later they were gone. >> this seems not just anti-social but almost in a way she's putting herself in a place where people can't reach her, people who love her can't reach her and you kind of see this in the other characters that you're following. >> absolutely. isolation is a big side effect of ptsd. there's a real tendency to shut people out. unfortunately that kind of creates a negative feedback loop and can exacerbate the other symptoms. one of the things that is definitely common is they've all gone through these period of isolation and you've all come out and reengaged with communities in different ways. >> absolutely. >> tell me what was the turning point? what was rock bottom for you? >> one day i noticed that i was just drinking every day from

11:00. that's when i think my mom noticed there was something seriously wrong with me. so she came to washington, d.c. from san antonio. and i made our differences of opinion an excuse to separate our accommodations. so i got her an apartment so i could like put her out. >> physically put her at a distance. >> exactly. i said i'll support you, i'll take care of you but i wanted to be home alone so i can drink and be depressed. i didn't want anyone to tell me what's wrong with you. i didn't want anyone to get in my way of fall into this rabbit hole. and i remember the day before i hit rock bottom, she came by to see me and she knocked on the door and she said i've been calling you and you don't answer the phone. i said, mom, can you just leave? sorry.

sorry. >> it's okay. what made you realize that this was not the right path, that there was something better? >> so the next day was one of the worst days, you know. i remember i had a bottle of honey jack daniels. it was a whole bottle. and i started drinking around 10:00 a.m. and by, i think sometime around 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon i had already blacked out. >> had you ever thought of taking your own life? >> yes. >> were you ashamed of feeling this way? >> i was. >> why? >> because i couldn't build any relationshi relationships. you can't go walk up to someone and say, by the way, i just want you to know that i have post-traumatic stress and i

could lash out at any second. it's okay, i will be fine in two minutes. but you can tell someone i have cancer and i'm going to do chemo next week. >> and they'll accept you for that. >> but they won't accept you for this person who something triggers with every inconsistency. inconsistency is one of my triggers. if you are halate to a date, i' already sick. so i figure there's something seriously wrong with me. and that day that everything just kind of went black, i felt most ashamed. my mom came to the hospital. i promised myself that that day was never going to define me. and i've been hiding that story for so long until lauren came to

me and wanted to tell the story. and through the trust we built, i was able to share my story. >> lauren, do you find that there's this significant reluctance even to get into this because maybe we wouldn't understand or we wouldn't accept them? >> they each told me in different ways that in sharing their story now through the series, it's giving the pain that they've experienced meaning. it's hopefully reaching another veteran, another individual who might be in a very dark place who might need to see that there is hope. it's giving them that sense of hope. and that is everyone's motivation as they've told me to participate. i think that's incredibly admirable because they're sharing some very intimate and difficult things. >> you built an organization kind of out of the ashes of this. tell us a little bit about that

and why you did this? >> ausv was created to bring all the vets together. i just kind of wanted on the around all of them. that's how it started. our mission was let's throw a party for me and get everybody to come see me. when they arrived, they were all happy to see each other and we all felt the same. it was about 600 of us the first time. >> you have an annual award ceremony every year. >> yes. we honor organizations and programs for profit and nonprofit that work toward the well-being of the veterans community on the ground in different categories. >> lauren, as you research this material, what kind of infrastructure is capable of making sure that we can intercept these trips to these

placesbottom, that we can stop that happening in the first place? >> a big key is awareness. they're sharing their stories and hopefully normalizing mental illness and ptsd, building community and incorporating civilians into that space. >> what should a civilian know? how should we act, what can we do? >> there's not one or two things that i want the civilian community to know. but i can tell you this, over the past four years that i have been able to coexist with others who have not served, i have found it easier to be able to interact with the veterans community, our dark sense of humor and some of our ways of just kind of conducting ourself just makes it easier. but there is another way to be able to reach one another, whether it's us reaching our

civilian loved ones or the other way around. and i honestly think the only solution for any mental health problem is love. and i know it's cliche but it's really true because that's what heel healed me. >> thank you both for joining me. the series is called "the war within". that is a sobering reminder of the human toll and the struggles of transitioning from the front line back into civilian life. join us tomorrow for my conversation with steve mcqueen about his heist thriller "widows." that's it. thanks for watching and join us again tomorrow night.

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