In One of the Marines' Most Iconic Jobs (Drill Instructors), a Stunning Pattern of Suicide
Marine Corps drill instructors are a national symbol of discipline. But for some, their imposing persona belies a dark reality.
Etienne Note: This article whitewashes the fact that Drill Instructors are engaged in using unethically manipulative techniques to create immoral “Order Followers” who will kill whomever they are told to kill for the organized crime “government.”
Military “basic training” is one of the 15 17 unethically manipulative techniques that I break down in my article: 15 (Now 17) Classic, "Textbook" Cult-Indoctrination Techniques the Organized Crime "Government" Uses on its Tax Slaves, The military routinely uses unethically manipulative techniques on both the drill instructors and recruits including The Uni-form (Single form, engineered conformity), Shaving heads (Engineered conformity), taking the doors off the bathrooms so recruits don’t have a moment of privacy to contemplate what they are committing to, having the recruits sing cadences glorifying killing, and more!
The Drill Instructors themselves use unethically manipulative techniques on the recruits, including Excessive Stress Induction: excessively inducing stress through extreme physical demands, sleep deprivation, or psychological pressure, which can push recruits beyond their limits to the point where their decision-making capacity and mental health are compromised. Degradation and Humiliation: Techniques that involve verbal abuse, humiliation, or degradation as a means to "break down" recruits before "building them up." These methods can undermine an individual’s dignity and self-esteem, potentially leading to long-term psychological effects. Isolation: Many training regimes isolate recruits from their peers or restrict communication with family and friends as a way to increase dependency on the military structure. This is manipulative as it leverages human social needs to enforce conformity and compliance. Misuse of Authority: Drill instructors hold significant power over recruits. Misusing this authority, such as favoritism, intimidation, or coercion, can be manipulative. It can create an environment where recruits feel compelled to act against their best interests or personal morality out of fear of retribution or desire for approval. Indoctrination: Techniques that suppress critical thinking or discourage questioning orders to promote absolute obedience are unethically manipulative, particularly if they impair the recruit’s ability to make independent moral judgments.
See even more examples of military cult indoctrination techniques in our folder: Brain Washing and Cult Indoctrination from our uncensorable Flash Drive ‘O Freedom: The Liberator. I added some memes from The Liberator to better illustrate the reality of the situation that the authors whitewashed….
Left, right, left, right, left right, kill!
Left, right, left, right, you know I will!
Went to the playground, where all the kiddies play,
Pull out my uzi, and I begin to spray!
Left, right, left, right, left right, kill!
Left, right, left, right, you know I will!
Go to the mall, where all the ladies shop,
Pull out my machete, and I begin to chop!
Left, right, left, right, left right, kill!
Left, right, left, right, you know I will!
USMC Marching Cadence
Military.com | By Kelsey Baker and Drew F. Lawrence
BEAUFORT, S.C. — Tatiana Sowell held her youngest child as she stood amid the rows of white headstones and stately mossy oaks. Her late husband, Logan, was buried in this national cemetery nearly four years ago after taking his life and ending what his widow describes as a ruinous tenure in one of the U.S. military’s most iconic jobs: Marine drill instructor. He was 33.
Nearby, her other children spotted a coin, regarded within the armed forces as a symbol of respect, resting atop his grave. Perhaps, she thought, it was left there by someone who worked with him molding new Marines at Parris Island, just south of here.
Sowell, her gaze wistful, reflected on the times she had driven Logan to work. “It was just quiet,” she recalled. “Peaceful.”
Logan Sowell’s suicide in July 2021 is one of at least seven in the past five years involving the Marine Corps’ stable of drill instructors, according to military casualty reports obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. In 2023, three occurred at Parris Island within less than three months.
A study completed by the Marine Corps in 2019 found that during the previous decade, 29 drill instructors either ended their lives or openly acknowledged they had contemplated doing so — an aberration the study’s authors characterized as startlingly high compared with the occurrence of suicidal ideation among Marines who had never held that job. Rates of addiction and divorce among drill instructors also were higher, researchers found.
Critics and relatives of those who died accuse the Marine Corps of fostering an environment that contributed to their deaths. They describe routine 90-hour-plus workweeks, sleep deprivation and an always-on culture that frequently caused the job’s requisite intensity to seep into their personal lives, igniting disputes with loved ones. Others detailed bouts of depression or alcohol dependency.
While the adrenaline-fueled assignment has always been high-stress, the 2016 death of 20-year-old Raheel Siddiqui, a Muslim recruit who was found by investigators to have suffered vicious abuse while at Parris Island, led the institution to sharpen its oversight of the men and women who indoctrinate newcomers. There is uncompromising accountability now, which has made the hardships long associated with being a drill instructor dangerously unbearable for some, observers say. They note, too, that the Marine Corps lacks adequate services for those who are struggling and need help, and tacitly condones a culture that stigmatizes those who seek it.
Siddiqui’s death generated acute scrutiny of the Marines’ approach to entry-level training, and the service responded with a heavy hand — prosecuting some drill instructors and making clear that all infractions, real or perceived, would be subject to a commanding general’s review with the possibility of severe disciplinary action.
“We put a drastic expectation on them to act perfect,” said a Marine officer who has supervised dozens of drill instructors. This top-down pressure can render them “terrified of their careers ending,” he explained. “It causes this stress that trickles into their home life.”
This Article was produced in partnership with the Washington Post.
An independent investigation conducted by the Inspector General of the Marine Corps supports that assessment. Concluded in November 2023, the inquiry found “a climate that fosters ‘surviving’ vice ‘thriving’ ” and a perception among staff that drill instructors’ welfare “is of low priority” to leadership. Investigators reported hearing from several people involved with recruit training who observed personnel “ ‘walking on eggshells,’ ‘on pins and needles,’ and generally ‘afraid for their careers.’ ”
One former drill instructor said the experience left him and his family shattered, adding, “I experienced a really, really dark side of myself.”
This account of the mental health crisis afflicting Marine Corps drill instructors is based on more than 30 interviews with service members, their families and their superiors. Several spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid about their struggles or to avoid retribution for criticizing the service.
In response to questions from The Washington Post and Military.com, the Marine Corps acknowledged that its drill instructors have “one of the most demanding roles” within the service and portrayed the findings of this investigation as part of an enduring epidemic affecting the entire Defense Department.
“Suicide rates are shaped by various factors and we as a service are constantly looking for strategies … that could have the most impact at reducing suicide in the military,” said Maj. Hector Infante, a spokesman for the Marines. He pointed to “a myriad of mental, physical, psychological, and spiritual wellness resources” available to all drill instructors, along with their families, and said that “leaders at all levels encourage them to utilize these resources.”
Infante did not address the institutional impact of Siddiqui’s death or how changes implemented as a result have affected drill instructors; nor did he comment on the circumstances surrounding the suicides addressed in this report.
The Marine Corps operates two recruit training depots, or boot camps. Most recruits who enlist west of the Mississippi River complete the 13-week program in San Diego. Those who join in the eastern United States filter through Parris Island. In the past year, the Marines have brought in more than 30,000 enlistees, most not long out of high school.
The task of turning them into warfighters falls to roughly 1,300 drill instructors, who over a three-month cycle might work 120 hours some weeks, former personnel say. In teams of three or four, they supervise platoons of 60 to 80 recruits around-the-clock, typically waking for work at 2:30 a.m. and rotating overnight responsibility. In a standard two- or three-year tour, drill instructors might do as many as nine cycles.
They are a national symbol of discipline, intimidating and seemingly indefatigable, and many who spoke with The Post and Military.com characterized the assignment as the most rewarding of their careers. But for some, the drill instructor’s imposing persona belies a far darker reality, one marred by debilitating stress, exhaustion and, in the most dire circumstances, a hopelessness difficult to overcome.
One evening in May 2021, Tatiana Sowell, then 36, recorded an angry encounter with her husband after hiding his car keys to keep him from driving drunk. Logan had been drinking more than ever, she said, recalling her fear that he might hurt her or someone else.
As their baby cries on the recording, Logan is heard yelling, his voice hoarse. “I don’t give a f---,” he says, challenging his wife to report him to a superior at the depot. “ … All I’m gonna do after that is blow my goddamned brains out.”
She never made the call. Weeks later, Logan was dead.
In recounting her husband’s downward spiral, she said he became overwhelmed by the pressure to be perfect at work and the guilt he felt being apart from their family. “That’s not the person he wanted to be,” she said.
‘Unrealistic expectations’
The Marine Corps, Infante said, invests “a great deal of effort” to ensure that drill instructors are “not only physically but also psychologically prepared for the rigors” of their assignment. He cited a screening that all prospective drill instructors do before they are cleared to attend the service’s 11-week preparatory school, where a formal psychiatric evaluation is performed. Personnel are “continuously supervised by their command leadership teams and peer group for possible warning signs … and, if issues arise, are given the opportunity to seek assistance,” he said.
While the Pentagon has worked to expand mental health services throughout the military, it has run headlong into a nationwide shortage of qualified providers. There are eight for boot camp personnel in San Diego and 15 at Parris Island, Infante said.
Former drill instructors acknowledged the screening they received before starting to work with recruits, but said that such help is needed most after the job begins — and that too often it’s difficult to obtain a timely appointment without declaring a full-blown crisis.
The job’s unspoken expectations also can have a chilling effect on any impulse to seek care, they said, describing a prevailing reluctance to be away from work — for mental health reasons or even a family event — for fear of leaving teammates shorthanded.
And then there is the sense of having an image to uphold.
Marine Corps tradition discourages drill instructors from showing emotion, other than intense acuity or anger, while around recruits. They are meant to be models of peak physical fitness — and always in character. Most recruits, in turn, revere their drill instructors, seeing them as “perfect, just immaculate, like gods or goddesses,” said one Marine who spent three years at Parris Island. But there are “a lot of unrealistic expectations” from leaders and peers alike, she added.
Another former drill instructor recalled struggling while going through a divorce, and feeling shunned and ashamed by colleagues after he vocalized that he might need help. “Nobody wanted to talk to me,” he said. “ … It’s like you’re the plague.”
By his third boot camp cycle, the slightest aggravation could trigger an eruption — and that intense anger was hard to turn off at home, he said. An unwashed dish left in the sink or a child’s candy wrapper on the floor could send him into a rage, he explained. He turned to alcohol to cope, he said, telling himself, “Let me just have a drink, just to calm myself down so that I don’t overreact when I might talk to my children.”
It was in his fifth cycle that he began to experience suicidal thoughts, he said. At the same time he sought mental health care, however, he was mistrustful of the personnel in charge of scheduling appointments and declined to disclose the extent of his distress. They told him to come back in two weeks, he said, because so many recruits were ahead of him awaiting care.
Days later, he confided in a superior, who placed a call on behalf of the drill instructor, an intervention he now considers lifesaving. That got him on a priority list for treatment, which continued regularly through the end of his assignment more than a year later, he said.
Reflecting on the experience, he said that he’s unsure what would have happened if he hadn’t gotten help, and that the process of seeking and obtaining care must be improved if the Marine Corps is serious about ensuring that those who need help can access it. If a drill instructor visits mental health services, he contends, it’s almost certainly no trivial matter. “They’ve got family stuff, serious depression,” he said. “It’s something serious.”
Former staffers at the recruit depots say the job’s unique stress can be traced in part to the fallout from Siddiqui’s death, a criminal case that exposed the propensity among some drill instructors to physically abuse recruits. Siddiqui, a Pakistani American from Michigan, died at Parris Island on March 18, 2016, after trying to escape his drill instructor by jumping 40 feet off a stairwell.
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Just my opinion and I may sound a bit naive, why don’t the military just change the program rather than provide resources and psychological help to help with the mental toll of it all? This is just training. They’re not even dying from fighting in a war.
The whole system is destructive to life...that's what having an army is all about.. To teach people to obey commands to kill, whether justified or not. The perceived need for such a system has for thousands of years been manufactured by 'leaders' who wish to gain more power no matter the shape it has. Very sad that we still fall for the fallacies these leaders put forth as truth and reason.