I attended a memorial service recently for my friend, Dan Cerrillo, a former Navy SEAL who died of a heart attack last month at the age of 50.
I had never been to a SEAL memorial before and I wasn't sure what to expect. It turned out to be a lesson about recognizing and seizing life's opportunities.
Dan's family and friends all spoke about "Dan's miracle." A few years before his untimely passing, Dan changed not only his life, but the lives of his wife and children, and many ex-SEALs like him. How did he do it? He took a chance.
Like so many SEALs, Dan fell into a spiral of alcohol and depression after leaving the Navy. His family was falling apart. His brain didn’t work. He couldn’t problem solve, couldn’t read or write. He was overwhelmed with sadness. He couldn’t sleep more than two hours a night. He was drinking a bottle of tequila a day. When people weren’t looking, he would cry. “I couldn’t fathom living any more in this condition,” he said.
He was not alone. There was a quiet episode of suicide ravaging the SEAL community. Commander Bobby Ramirez, who had just taken over command of SEAL Team One, took his own life shortly before Christmas 2022. A few days after Cerrillo died, Mike Day, who had survived being shot 27 times while in Iraq, took his own life.
Suicide rates among special operations forces were the highest in the military and higher than that of the general population, according to a study by Special Operations Command. From 2007 through 2015, there were 117 suicides among members of the special operations community. In 2012, 23 took their lives—a rate of 39.3 per 100,000. (The study did not break down the deaths by branch of service.)
Researchers examined 29 cases in detail. Almost all had some form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or emotional trauma following deployment. In a dozen cases, the deceased had shared with loved ones the traumatic experiences they had experienced on deployment. These included being under enemy fire and watching fellow soldiers die in roadside bomb blasts, as well as killing enemy soldiers and animals, witnessing or participating in detainee torture and death, and missions that went against their ethical beliefs.
Like many of his fellow SEALs, Cerrillo was haunted by the ghosts of men who lives he had taken in combat. “My memories are ones that some overeducated shrink thinks but can never understand,” Cerrillo wrote in an unpublished memoir he shared with me. “If you have never taken a life, then you just can’t feel the emotions that go along with death. Taking a life (of a bad guy) is easy and the after-effects are easily drunk away. But when you take and innocent life, it never goes away. It just sits and haunts you night after night.” He would wake up and see the faces of the men he had sent to the afterlife
Dan tried everything he could to heal himself: Yoga, meditation, electrotherapy, you name it. Nothing worked. Then he learned about a program in Mexico that offers psychedelic therapy to veterans. It would have been easy for Dan to say no. He came from the hypermasculine SEAL world and psychedelic culture was not his thing. But I think Dan recognized that it might be his last chance at a normal life.
The Dan Cerrillo who returned from Mexico was a different man. The anger that had consumed him was replaced with love. He still had his struggles but he devoted himself to his wife, Leilani, and his children. His oldest son, Dominic, said he got the father he had always dreamed of having.
Dan dedicated the rest of his life to helping other SEALs who were quietly suffering as he had been. Leilani said she has heard from many former teammates who had stopped drinking because of Dan. She encouraged anyone who was listening that if a chance comes along that might improve your life, take it. No matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel.
About 60 Frogmen, as they like to call themselves, attended Dan's memorial. One by one, they bid farewell to their fallen comrade by pounding their Tridents--the coveted pin that all SEALs proudly wear-- into a wooden flag with their fists and saluting. Then they gathered in the group huddle you see below and chanted his name together one last time.
Godspeed, Dan Cerrillo.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.