It’s no secret that many veterans struggle with the return to civilian life. One statistic is particularly troubling: “117,000 vets lost their lives to suicide over the course of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars,” said Mike Girard, a retired U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) spec ialist. “They say with all the guys who got out and separated and have fallen off the radar, that number could be as high as 300,000 to 400,000; 7,000 were lost in combat-related events.” Girard, founder and owner of 3 Hundred Days Distilling in Monument, is the core of the story in “Bombs to Booze,” a new 2025 documentary by Colorado Springs native Lauryn Ritchie. The locally produced film about the Colorado veteran community was nominated for a 2025 Heartland Emmy and is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. Mike Girard is the founder and owner of 3 Hundred Days Distilling in Monument. (Courtesy of Lauryn Ritchie) Part of the new documentary, “Bombs to Booze,” chronicles the background of 3 Hundred Days Distilling in Monument, owned by a U.S. Army veteran. (Courtesy of Lauryn Ritchie) Lauryn Ritchie’s new documentary, “Bombs to Booze,” was nominated for a 2025 Heartland Emmy. (Courtesy of Lauryn Ritchie) Ritchie’s 40-minute film seeks to break down the stigma of having to remain strong and refuse mental health help, lest they appear weak, that many military members and vets face during and post-service. She interviewed several vets in the Pikes Peak region, including Girard, two former EOD technicians and an Army officer who worked with Girard in Afghanistan. They shared their stories of transitioning out of the military, how difficult it was, and how they managed to eventually find an improved quality of life through therapies, including alternative modalities like ketamine infusions, equine therapy and hyperbaric chambers. “You’ll get through the mission, and then you can deal with whatever happened — I heard that a lot,” said Ritchie, who graduated from Lewis-Palmer High School and Colorado State University in Fort Collins. “But then comes another mission and another, and then comes a time when you realize you’ll never reach out for help. We wanted to question that line of thinking and make sure people knew it doesn’t make you any less of a person to reach out for help, and there are a lot of options out there.” After 23 years and four combat deployments, Girard came face-to-face with the blank page of life after military duty. The surrealness of civilian life was made more difficult for him by a body wracked with arthritis and pain. But unlike many other vets, Girard had a good support system — his wife and daughter — and he was able to build and nurture his moonshine business by taking a three-gallon pressure cooker IED (improvised explosive device) his team defused in Afghanistan and turning it into a still. He opened his distillery more than a decade ago and uses it as a vehicle to advocate for veterans’ mental health. “It’s instilled in your brain to be a charge forward into danger type of personality. When you’re deployed and working overseas, you thrive on chaos, and when you get out, that doesn’t exist anymore,” Girard said. “You’re trying to transition out in a meaningful way. Seeking help is the last thing you do. You don’t want to be perceived as weak. If you don’t feel like you have purpose, you can go down some dark holes.” A common trajectory is a stop at the Department of Veterans Affairs, where vets get some sort of diagnosis, pills and sometimes referrals for talk therapy, Girard says. Girard’s got a different approach to helping vets, and it comes through his nonprofit 0.k, which helps connect them to other nonprofits and organizations that provide alternative therapies. Most don’t know such options exist. “Our goal is to let them know it’s available, and it wouldn’t cost thousands to get into treatments,” Girard said. “Most are nonprofits or costs that don’t come out of a vet’s pockets. This is no dig on the VA. It’s overtaxed. So many people are coming in, and a lot of times vets need more than just a referral, and to sit in front of a 24-year-old therapist who has never been through what you’ve been through.” The military and mental health have always been close to Ritchie’s heart, as her father was in the U.S. Air Force. She now lives in California and is working on another project with a similar focus. “I learned a lot about the stigma within the military,” she said. “The message of reaching out for help doesn’t exclusively apply to the military. It applies to everyone experiencing mental health issues.” Details Bombstobooze.com ...read more read less