'Coming Home: Soldiers and Drugs'

Coming Home: Soldiers and Drugs

Spc. William Swenson was on his final mission in Iraq when his vehicle drove over a 200-pound improvised explosive device. The blast injured Swenson's spine, and he developed syringomyelia. When a laundry list of prescribed painkillers proved ineffective, Swenson says he turned to marijuana.

Back home, Swenson tested positive for marijuana and cocaine, he told ABC News. The Army court-martialed him and threw him in jail for 20 days.

Spc. Alan Hartmann was a gunner on a Chinook helicopter, flying missions from Kuwait into Iraq and ferrying the dead bodies of U.S. soldiers killed in combat.

After surviving his third crash, Hartmann returned home with chronic neck pain, fatigue and nightmares. He traded his prescribed anti-depressants and painkillers for methamphetamines. Hartmann eventually checked himself into rehab and is now clean.

Spc. Jeffrey Smith worked as a medic in a Baghdad ER, where he witnessed the "complete insanity" that would stay with him long after he retured to the homefront. "We saw everything from gunshot wounds to people missing legs, arms, pieces of their face," he told ABC News.

Smith said to escape from the daily "insanity," if even for a short time, many soldiers working in the hospital began to abuse Ambien, Percocet and Prozac, as well as prescription painkillers available on the black market in Baghdad.

Smith told ABC News he self-medicated himself with alcohol, marjuana, cocaine and ecstasy. Smith even attempted suicide, he said. Although he sought help, Smith said he was kicked out of the Army without benefits after testing positive for cocaine twice and marijuana once.

Spc. Matthew McKane worked as a medic in the Baghdad ER. He says his worst day was when a suicide bomber drove a car into a Baghdad orphanage, injuring dozens of children, some younger than five. Like many of his co-workers, McKane turned to drugs to numb his senses. When those weren't enough, McKane said he and a fellow medic tried propofol, a powerful anesthetic. His comrade overdosed and died.

When McKane returned to Fort Carson, he said he tested positive for cocaine. He is currently in prison awaiting a court-martial on misconduct charges. McKane believes he will soon be dismissed from the Army because of his drug use.

(ABC News)

Hidden Wounds Lead to Drugs
Part Three of the Series: 'Coming Home: Soldiers and Drugs'

By ROBERT LEWIS and KATE MCCARTHY
Nov. 28, 2007

Editor's Note from Brian Ross: In the third year of a joint project with the nonprofit Carnegie Corporation, six leading graduate school journalism students were again selected to spend the summer working with the ABC News investigative unit.
Editor's Note from Brian Ross: In the third year of a joint project with the nonprofit Carnegie Corporation, six leading graduate school journalism students were again selected to spend the summer working with the ABC News investigative unit.

In His Own Words: Spc. Alan Hartmann (go to link for video)

This year's project involved an examination of whether, as happened in the wake of the Vietnam War, Iraqi war veterans were turning to drugs as a result of the trauma and pain of war.

The U.S. military maintains the percentage of soldiers abusing drugs is extremely small and has not increased as a result of Iraq.

The students' assignment was to get the unofficial side of the story from soldiers, young men of their own generation.


Today's report is the third in a series of five reports.

As more U.S. service members return home from Iraq and Afghanistan after witnessing the horrors of war, more will turn to drugs and alcohol to cope.

That's according to mental health experts who say there is a strong correlation between Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, and substance abuse. PTSD is an anxiety disorder that afflicts people who have been through a traumatic event.

Photos
Coming Home: Soldiers and DrugsDr. Phillip Ballard, a psychiatrist at Penrose-St. Francis Health Services in Colorado Springs, Colo., said he has seen a significant increase of soldiers from nearby Fort Carson seeking inpatient treatment for substance abuse.

"PTSD has as part of its core diagnosis the use of substances as self-medication for the relief of depression, anxiety, whatever feeling they may have," Ballard said. "Sometimes it's considered to be a weakness or a less than manly thing to ask for assistance or ask for help so they do the best they can do with what they have available...they use the chemicals and drugs they've used in the past to numb feelings up."

go here for the rest
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=3921499&page=1



Tale of Three Medics

High at the Mountain Post

This is a good report.

When my husband's nephew came home from Vietnam, he was already addicted to heroin. It was self-medication that he was hooked on. He didn't want to get high. He wanted to kill off feelings he did not want to ever feel again and if it meant he would kill off any good feelings with them, so be it. To him, not feeling that kind of pain was worth any price.

That price sent him to jail for a long time. When he got out, eventually, he fell in love with a good woman with a sharp mind. A professional woman, independent and wealthy by some standards. She helped him begin to heal enough that he was willing to get clean. She made sure he went to the VA to be treated and he was. Eventually his claim was approved. He had shrapnel still imbedded in his body and a lot of back pain, along with a diagnosis of PTSD. All those years, he never knew what it was. He didn't have much of a sense of it until my husband was diagnosed and began to share with his nephew. Andy, well he was just a few months younger than my husband Jack. Both of them enlisted in the Army the same year.

Back then MRI's were very dangerous for anyone with metal in their body. The VA wanted him to have an MRI. He though they were trying to kill him. The next attack came when he sent for his records from the DOD. The response came back that the unit he served in, never existed. Andy had been living with blaming himself for a couple of his buddies getting blown up. The denial meant that the government was also denying his friends died. If the unit never existed, then neither did they.

All that work, all that time of healing, was over with a few days later when he contacted his ex-dealer. He was back on heroin. Not long after, he bought enough for ten men to die. He checked himself into a motel room. Locked the door. Pushed furniture up against the door so that no one could get in. He used all the heroin. He knew what he was doing.

This country can say it as many times as they want but what all of this boils down to is that no one really looks at the soldiers and Marines as human. If they ever did they wouldn't see them as being any different than themselves. They would have to take a good, long, hard look at what we ask all of them to go through when we send them to war. Logical people would understand that in sending them, we should accept the responsibility for them, since they are necessary for the security of this nation. We are not a logical nation. We are an emotional one. We are a judgmental one. For all the talk of being compassionate, while the majority of the people are, those who lead it are not.

A lot of people want to just blame Bush for all of this, but Andy committed suicide when Clinton was in office and it was not Bush in office when Andy and my husband came home. Bush however is in office right now. He did in fact send the troops into two different nations to risk their lives. Debate the righteousness all you want but what is not and should never be open to debate is taking care of them. Bush didn't cause the problems with the VA, he increased them. He did not cause all the wounded veterans, but he added to them and failed to take care of them. The VA was already backlogged and under-funded as well as under-staffed before Afghanistan was invaded and well before Iraq was even being addressed. No one did anything about it.

Now as Iraq and Afghanistan veterans receive preferential treatment, as abysmal as it is, the older veterans are pushed aside. Will we ever get any of this right? Will we ever live up to what we say? kc