For Vietnam vets, PTSD flares years after a long-ago war

Times In-Depth: For Vietnam vets, PTSD flares years after a long-ago war

BY GERRY WEISS, Erie Times-News
PUBLISHED: MARCH 19, 2012


He no longer drinks a dozen beers a day to avoid coping.

He has stopped feeling guilty for returning home from Vietnam alive when scores of others in his unit were killed by gunfire, airstrikes and mortar blasts.

Steve Carroll began treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder in January 2010, though the Crawford County resident has been suffering from it since the early 1970s.

Like many other combat veterans, he was particularly reticent, rarely opening up to anyone but fellow soldiers with similar experiences.

He saw his alcohol abuse, sleeplessness and withdrawal from society as emasculating. Seeking help, he would say, was out of the question.

Instead, Carroll ignored his symptoms and immersed himself in the family horticultural business. Working 18-hour days, seven days a week was common.

"My dad said I'd be burned out by the time I was 35," Carroll said.

"Instead of getting burned out, I became an alcoholic."

Soldiers from different eras have come home to a different America.

Veterans of World War II were cheered at ticker-tape parades by a nation that praised them as winners and heroes.

The men and women back from Iraq and Afghanistan return to try and find their place in a country reeling from high unemployment and a sluggish economy.

Veterans of the Vietnam War, which ended in 1973, were largely rejected and ostracized, and considered losers of a conflict that claimed the lives of 58,000 American soldiers.
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