General Hospital (GH) star Maurice Benard (Sonny Corinthos) doesn’t run from hard truths. His latest State of Mind podcast makes that clear.
He sat down with Matty Fiorenza, a retired firefighter who worked 22 years on the front lines. Things got uneasy quickly. They had to.
Trigger warning: This article contains brief mentions of suicide.
Current Events Collide
The episode aired as news about the Jonathan Rinderknecht mistrial dominated headlines surrounding the Palisades fire.
He’s the man accused in the Palisades fire. Fire safety is everywhere in the news right now. So is the weight first responders carry.
The Weight of Moral Injury
Fiorenza describes a career that wrecked his nervous system. The first ten years were fine. Then reality set in.
One call, in particular, stayed with him. It involved treating a 13-year-old girl who had just delivered stillborn twins.
Back then, Vietnam vets on his crew threw coffee pots at him. No one talked about mental health. Fiorenza labels what he went through as “complex PTSD” and “moral injury.”
He explains that means witnessing things that “go against the laws of nature.” You don’t process that over breakfast.
The trauma piled up. Fiorenza turned to addiction to dull the pain. That path eventually dropped him into a suicidal crisis.
“You just want the pain to stop,” Fiorenza says.
Sharing the Darkest Moments
Maurice Benard cut in right there. The actor got emotional. His voice cracked. He told Fiorenza he knew that feeling completely.
During his own breakdown years ago, Benard recalled reaching a point where he no longer wanted to keep living.
“I didn’t want to go on because I didn’t want to feel this anymore,” Benard shares.
But the episode doesn’t leave you hanging. Fiorenza survived his attempt.
He found a group of combat vets who taught him meditation. These days he runs a treatment center.
He stays grounded with daily prayer, Bible reading, and accountability.
The Power of the Tribe
He leans hard on a small group of men.
They “take away that baseball bat you like to beat yourself up with,” he says.
They track each other’s steps on Garmin watches. If someone goes quiet and stops moving, a friend shows up at their door.
Maurice Benard wants people to watch the whole interview. The General Hospital star says it’s worth it: a real look at surviving deep trauma and finding a way forward.
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