In the last article I was asked by PBS to include the links and possibly a video link to do so. I am having a reaction to this that I have not had in many months. Anger, I want to write some more! So, I put together some snippets together and thought I might try and narrate it for you..as always filtered through the mind of a combat mentally wounded veteran.
PBS:
"I was having a total mental breakdown. Every day we were getting in battles and never having a break. It seemed like, it was just crazy,” he says. “They put me on all kinds of meds, and I was still going out on missions. They had me on Ambien, Remeron, Lexapro, Celexa, all kind of different stuff."
"It was hard to find somebody that wasn’t taking Ambien"
"These drugs enable the Army to keep soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder on the battlefield."
"It helps you sleep, and it also f***s you up. It gets you pretty high"
"We have someone who’s been emotionally traumatized, and they’ve got PTSD. They’re anxious, and they’re depressed, and they’ve got TBI, which means that they’ve got problems in decision making. They can’t think as clearly. They are really vulnerable to just overreacting."
Talk about overreacting, I...I have seen it done...and...ah, oh I have done it too! What the *** do you think will happen when you don't, can't or won't help our soldiers and veterans coming off of multiple tours, killing for how many and ungot told hours? Really, want me to calculate that up for you? Like I cannot forget the infinite infiltrations of who's reality I am in. Take me here, what I do here I cannot do over there. But, now I am told I cannot do this here and question who is doing the questioning. Try and operate with a mind that only lets you in on what it thinks is really going on.
This article pisses me off totally, THE CENTRAL THESIS OF THIS WEBSITE IS 'THE CRIMINALIZATION OF COMBAT PTSD'. Some of the other options to putting a mentally combat wounded soldier or veteran in a evidence based practice setting such as a long-term treatment facility verses letting them fester until they explode on the unsuspecting civilian. That guy was the first squad member to do what needed to get everyone out alive, that made it that is. Our fathers tell us of the guy that got them out of the war, they say to us through haunted eyes. They say, "Yeah, he was a hell of a guy!"
Let me boil it down;
You are about to die. Now we have a guy, the guy who can get you out of this situation who will do what needs to be done. If you are ready to proceed, make your choice. If he, helps you, now. Will you help him later? As if living off of your smarts and wits was ever easy. It seems easier to make promises for such services now and harder to actually cash in that type of sentiment later.
Uh, hey its your Uncle Sam. I was gonna drop by, but caught up in that, so I couldn't make it over. You know how it is, huh little cuz?
Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PtsdASoldiersPerspective/~3/YAJi8JUXCbU/all-of-these-voices-are-mine.html
Posted
May 12 2010, 01:59 PM
by
PTSD: A Soldier's Perspective