The Debts We Don't Acknowledge: Remembrance Day and Men's Mental Health

I spent a short period in the Canadian reserves in my youth—infantry with the Loyal Edmonton Regiment. I never saw combat, and because of that I’ve never truly felt like I “served.” In hindsight, it feels more like I tried on the costume but never stepped onto the stage where the real story unfolds.

Earlier this week I watched In Waves and War, a documentary about veterans using psychedelic therapy to treat psychological wounds. And I found myself struck—not just by their pain, but by their courage. I’ve always known I was spared something, but the film made me realize I wasn’t just spared danger. I was spared a certain transformation that only trauma and meaning-making can conjure.

Some look at veterans with visible or invisible wounds and say they’re “damaged.” I don’t. If anything, they’re more honest than most men I know. The difference isn’t the wound—it’s the willingness to face it. It’s the continued service to their purpose, their families, and their own healing long after the uniform is folded away.

In Beyond Material Salvation, I talk about how we shape our identities through the stories we tell ourselves—about debt, about failure, about what it means to be strong or weak. Many men live inside a story of quiet despair, hoping things will get better while doing nothing to stop the slow erosion of the self. They circle the drain, ignoring the signs of their own decline because vulnerability feels like failure. But as I’ve written, vulnerability is often the beginning of authenticity, not the end of it.

To look straight into the abyss of your own suffering and say, “Teach me,” is an act of agency. It’s also the first step out of the trap we build for ourselves—whether that trap is financial, emotional, or existential.

Psychedelics cracked my psyche open years ago. They reshaped the architecture of my mind and taught me something that underpins the entire argument of my book: we cannot heal from what we refuse to acknowledge.

November is Men’s Health Awareness Month. If we’re going to talk about health, we need to talk about the mind—about the burdens men carry silently and the narratives they inherit about strength, duty, and worth. We need to talk about the invisible prisons we build, and the ones we guard.

My friend Brian “Bunny” Batista is raising money for men’s mental health and offering an original figure drawing to donors. He’s doing the kind of quiet work that reminds men they’re not alone. If you’re able, please support him: https://movember.com/m/brianbunnybatista?mc=1

On Remembrance Day, we honour those who served. But we should also honour those still fighting—the inner battles, the unspoken ones, the ones no one salutes. Because the truth is: many of us are still trying to climb out of the stories that wounded us. And healing, like service, is an act of courage.