by Chaplain Kathie
Iraq veteran Nick Wright said medications made him feel like a "zombie" among other things needing to be addressed. We know that medications do help level things so that therapy can work but Wright also said "It's just a Band-Aid." Medications for PTSD may numb the emotional pain but they do not heal it. That is the biggest problem with most of the "treatments" the DOD and the VA are using.
After 40 years of researching Combat PTSD, experts had discovered a long time ago what is necessary in healing it is addressing the whole veteran. Mind, body and spirit.
This is more of a wound to the spirit, the same spirit/soul that lives within the human mind. Forgetting about healing it first has taken us backwards. Telling them to pop pills that leave them numb allows PTSD to gain more control so they end up needing stronger drugs, more prescriptions for more of them and when they fail to relieve the veteran, they turn to other substances. After all if medication is what they need according to the VA, and they are not working, well then, something out there must. Right?
Hell no!
For Vietnam veterans trapped in Combat PTSD hell, medications are something they've learned to live with because of how long it was allowed to live within them untreated. Even they have been helped by addressing the whole veteran and a lot of what they have been suffering from has been healed so they can live a better quality of life. When you talk to them, you understand how it breaks their hearts that younger veterans are not getting what they need today so they don't have to suffer like them 30 years from now. None of it has to happen.
The sooner PTSD is addressed, the sooner it breaks down. The longer it goes on untreated, more of the core of the veteran breaks down. It hits every part of their lives.
Area veteran trying to find his own way out of war'sImagine that! He doesn't think anyone understands it? Well maybe the people he has been turning to don't but there is an enormous Army understanding Combat PTSD all too well.
Posted: 07/16/2012
Oroville Mercury Register.com
CHICO -- Nearly 5,000 U.S. troops lost their lives in Iraq, but veterans groups estimate 60 times that many may have their transitions back into civilian life disrupted by symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
In 2007, Chico resident Nick Wright left the Marine Corps after three tours in Iraq, and stepped into a quagmire of emotional issues he is still trying to sort out five years later.
Except for a few counseling sessions with a veterans group shortly after coming home, he has tried to control his symptoms by relying on an inner strength.
"I feel the only thing that can change me is me," said Wright.
Wright has rejected alcohol and drugs -- even prescription drugs offered free by the government -- believing they only mask symptoms, and often lead to even deeper emotional problems.
"I'll have a beer now and then. Hell, I've earned the right," he said. "But I never want PTSD to be an excuse for addiction or domestic violence -- or sinking so low I might take my own life."
Like many warriors freshly diagnosed with PTSD, Wright was prescribed medications to control flashbacks and help him sleep.
"I took them for a couple of months, but felt like a zombie," he said. "I felt stupid. I had no motivation.
"It's just a Band-Aid," Wright said.
Wright still refuses to discuss emotional issues with Veterans Administration counselors. Since coming home, he has minimized his contact with the outside world -- a way of life he said returning troops call "bunkering down."
"PTSD has been around for centuries, they just called it something else," Wright said.
"I don't think anyone really understands it."read more here
For a start there is Point Man International Ministries "walking point since 1984" and treating Combat PTSD the way it needs to be treated first. Spiritually with understanding, compassion, experience and leading the way out of this darkness. They've been there. Most are still there living with PTSD but it lost the ability to destroy them. You probably never heard of them other than on this blog with occasional posts because they do not spend millions on public relations campaigns any more than they ask for millions of dollars from the general public. Most of the Out Post leaders for Veterans and Home Front leaders for families take money out of their own pockets to help others just like them and it works.
I am part of Point Man for this reason. While the experts I trust have been researching Combat PTSD for 40 years, I've only been doing it for 30, plus living with it married to a Vietnam Veteran. We've heading into our 28th anniversary. He is the reason I do what I do. He's also the reason why I know none of the suffering we're seeing has to happen.
If you want to know more about Combat PTSD, go to PTSD Videos at the top of Wounded Times Blog. It will open to Hero After War, one of the videos I created years ago. There are more PTSD videos on it including the one I made for Point Man International Ministries.
Some people hear the word "ministries" and think of someone hitting them over the head with a Bible instead of holding out a hand to help them. Point Man does not try to convert anyone. We just want to stop veterans from feeling like "zombies" and start to live again!
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