ptsd Good Article

[carlie]

Sorry, I was unable to delete the advertisement portion.

Hope this helps a vet.

carlie

http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-...news-columnists

Return from battle is start of new fight

June 15, 2007

Here's an early distress call, as our soldiers slowly return home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not all wounds are as easily visible as the broken bones, the missing limbs or the shrapnel from IEDs. But these are every bit as debilitating - and potentially even more widespread.

As today's generation of war vets struggles to put their lives back in order, more and more of them are slipping into alcoholism and drug abuse. No one knows the full extent of the problem. But experts and advocates are beginning to voice alarm.

"One in three veterans is now returning with some form of PTSD," said Paul Rieckhoff, director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, using the acronym for post-traumatic stress disorder. "They face a VA system with a 600,000-case backlog, a system where people are waiting 170 days for mental health treatment."

"So what do you do while you're waiting?" Rieckhoff asked. "Your rage is growing. You're fighting with your wife. You're trying to deal with housing and employment. Often - not always, but often enough - people are turning to alcohol and drugs."

"It's a real problem and a growing one," agreed Tony Newman of the reform-minded Drug Policy Alliance. "We have these vets self-medicating, then ending up in jail instead of getting the help they need."

Drug and alcohol abuse is a tragic, maybe even inevitable, consequence of going to war. And none of this should come as a surprise.

We require our soldiers to do things that no civilian is ever asked to do. Live for months on end in constant danger. Come face to face with carnage every day. Try to tell the friends from the enemies. Decide in an instant who lives and who dies.

Of course, no one's life is ever the same after that. And sometimes, for awhile at least, drugs and alcohol can ease the pain.

"They're coming back traumatized," said Dr. David E. Smith, executive medical director of the PROMETA Centers, one of America's leading drug-addiction specialists. "These people are entering the drug scene, the alcohol scene. Just like in Vietnam, they got beaten up and battered in an unpopular war. Don't we have some responsibility to help them?"

No one can match Smith's historical perspective on the returning vets and substance abuse. For 39 years, he ran the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic in San Francisco, a frontline fighter as the Summer of Love gave way to some very long winters of addiction, self-destruction, recovery and relapse.

But that history gives Smith some hope, as well. With so many fresh veterans suffering from drug and alcohol abuse the last time, he said, society began to look at addiction through a different lens.

Suddenly, the addict wasn't just some street bum. He was a soldier fresh out of uniform. That still meant something - and means something - in America.

"In the '60s, we were detoxing addicts and getting arrested for doing it," Smith said. "The only way we could support the clinic was with benefit rock concerts" featuring bands like the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Big Brother and the Holding Company.

By the 1970s though, addicted vets were on the street, and treatment became more palatable politically. "All of a sudden, the feds were coming around, giving us grants," the clinic founder said. "What changed? We were doing the same thing in the same place. But all of a sudden, we had these veterans coming home from Vietnam, strung out."

No two wars are the same. And there are some differences between the two eras. For one thing, Paul Rieckhoff said, drug abuse on the battlefield is not quite as common this time, despite Afghanistan's role as the world's primary poppy supplier.

"This time, the troops are in much closer confines," the vet leader said. "The discipline is tighter. It's a professional army, not a drafted army. The soldiers are drug-tested more often."

The good news is that most of them will return home alive.

The bad news? They'll be dealing with a whole range of tough life challenges. And if we don't find some ways to help them, too many will ease their pain in all the wrong ways.

Email: henican@newsday.com