Friday, April 23, 2010

War will change your soul

Eventually no matter who you are, war will affect you. War will change your soul.


A US medic's tale of traumatic war stress treatment
BBC News


Specialist William B Allen is a US Army combat medic who served two tours in Iraq, spending 27 months there. He recently completed a three-week treatment programme for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) at the Warrior Combat Stress Reset Center at Fort Hood, the largest US military base in the world.

Being a combat medic, we're on 24 hours a day. We had mass casualty events, female suicide bombers blowing up hospitals three times in a row. We'd be the ones to respond to that. I was always responding to these IED (improvised explosive device) blasts. I was blown up several times.

When you're back in America you never stop being hyper-vigilant. Insomnia set in for about four months. I was going bananas, I was going crazy.

I started drinking, substance abuse, I had suicidal ideas, even acted on those. I was tired of having the nightmares, I wanted to go see my dead friends.
read more here

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8634488.stm

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