TRAUMATIZED VETERANS TURNING TO ALCOHOL, DRUGS

The stories are pouring in. Large numbers of veterans returning from
Iraq are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic
brain injury. A frequent reaction to both of these painful health
challenges is the use and misuse of alcohol and other drugs.
Veterans, closed out of meaningful support when they return from the
front lines, seek relief of their symptoms through self-medication.
Some get better. Tragically, others do not.

For some vets, many of them on longer-than-expected tours of duty,
the self-medication begins even before they have left the battle
fields in Iraq and Afghanistan. A March 13 front-page story in The
New York Times addresses the issue of drug use among soldiers: "It's
clear that we've got a lot of significant alcohol problems that are
pervasive across the military," said Dr. Thomas R. Kosten, a
psychiatrist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston. He
traces their drinking and drug use to the stress of working in a war
zone. "The treatment that they take for it is the same treatment that
they took after Vietnam," Dr. Kosten said. "They turn to alcohol and drugs"

Then there are the heartbreaking accounts of veterans who can't quiet
the demons from war and are committing suicide. On March 13, CBS News
reported on veteran Jonathan Schulze, who killed himself after not
receiving help from the U.S. Jonathan's father, Jim, talked about
Jonathan's life after he returned from war. "In a matter of hours he
could go from unbelievable anger and rage to just uncontrollable
weeping" According to the CBS story, Jonathan turned to drugs,
alcohol and fighting. When Jonathan tried to get help at a V.A.
hospital, he was told he was 26 on a waiting list, and that they just
didn't have enough beds for him. Four days later, he hanged himself.

In the March 19 New York Times, Bob Herbert writes about the terrible
case of Jeffrey Lucey, another young veteran who turned to alcohol
and then suicide as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder. "By
the time he came home, Jeffrey Lucey was a mess ... He had
nightmares. He drank furiously. He wrecked his parents' car. He began
to hallucinate," Herbert's column states. Jeffrey's father, Kevin,
found his son dead on June 22, 2004, after he hanged himself in their
basement. The column describes Kevin's voice quivering as he says,
"When we hear anybody in the administration get up and say that they
support the troops, it sickens us"

One out of three returning Iraq war veterans is asking for
mental-health services. What is going to happen to all of the people
who served their country and are now suffering from depression and
suicidal thoughts? Many will end up using drugs, as many of us
civilians do. Now, on top of everything else going on, many of our
veterans are going to have to worry about getting caught with illegal
drugs and being arrested. Any service members who are incarcerated
and separated from their families because of their addiction will
become yet more "collateral damage" of this war. U.S. prisons are
already filled with nonviolent drug law offenders, many serving long
sentences for small amounts of drugs. It is easy for people to buy a
bumper sticker and demand that we "support the troops," but if we are
going to walk the talk, we had better offer treatment -- not a jail
cell or a tombstone -- as we help our brothers and sisters heal from war.