Guns and Mental Health by Walk the Talk America · Walk the Talk America

EP 163: Causing a Pause for the High Performers with Charles Anderson

·1 hr 31 min·5 clips

Charles says his first suicide attempts came after losing everything from the brokerage collapse.

1. Guns and Mental Health by Walk the Talk America focuses on Charles Anderson's path from finance and marketing into the firearms media and mental-health conversation. 2. Host Mike and guest Charles Anderson speak as industry peers; Mike knows Charles from NASGW and says their first bar conversation led to this interview. 3. The episode asks what happens when a firearms-industry leader speaks openly about substance abuse, suicide, and responsibility. 4. Charles says he grew up "relatively poor" in Rye, New York, a wealthy town associated with Barbara Bush and the Rockefeller mansion. 5. He says his grandmother worked for the Rockefellers, which is how his family could afford to live there. 6. He describes New York in the 1990s, including the rave scene, Tunnel, Limelight, Grateful Dead shows, Phish, and Moe. 7. He says he became homeless, lived in his car, and then met a high-school friend who urged him to become a stockbroker. 8. Charles says he passed his Series 7 two weeks after turning 19, which he describes as making him the youngest broker ever through the program. 9. He says the brokerage world felt like normal business to him at the time, and he later understood that it resembled the world portrayed in Wolf of Wall Street and Boiler Room. 10. He says the pressure, substance abuse, and high expectations in that brokerage job eventually caused him to crash out. 11. He describes having a penthouse apartment in White Plains and a Porsche before the brokerage firm shut down and sent him back to having only a high-school diploma. 12. He says he later moved into venture capital, working in sales, business development, marketing, and gray-market advertising for restricted products. 13. He says 9/11 hit him hard because friends from high school were on the plane and in the towers, and he left New York for Michigan after feeling unable to handle the aftermath. 14. Charles says he bought his first gun in Michigan after going shooting with a friend, then started posting about holsters, classes, and firearms on Facebook around 2011-2012. 15. He says his ex-wife told him that his New York friends thought he had become "some kind of right-wing crazy militia guy," and he rejected the idea that he should hide who he was. 16. He says imposter syndrome has been central to his mental-health struggle, especially when trying to act like a different person to fit the firearms industry. 17. The interview turns into an argument for authenticity, with Charles saying people should stop pretending to be "badass" and should not invent military or law-enforcement backgrounds. 18. He says the firearms industry has a rhetoric problem, a generational culture problem, and a tendency to avoid uncomfortable topics like suicide and school shootings. 19. People in the firearms industry who care about mental health, marketing, and responsibility would get the most out of this conversation. 20. Listeners looking for a light entertainment episode without discussion of suicide, addiction, or industry politics may want to skip it.

As heard by us

Plainspoken talk about stigma, recovery, and speaking honestly about mental health in the firearms world.

This conversation looks at mental health in the firearms world through Charles Anderson and the hosts, with attention on stigma, recovery, and the value of speaking more openly about struggle.

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Why you'd press play

You want an open conversation about mental health and stigma in the firearms world.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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