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Battling The Curse of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Excerpt below from Semper Fly, With wounded warriors in quiet waters, by Matt Labash, published on the WeeklyStandard.com (Many of the wounded HOW fishes with that are physically wounded also have PTSD and/or TBI. This is one injured person's story.) Combat is hard, he says. It's no joke, and no matter what you do, you can't ever really prepare for it. "When it's real, and your buddy slumps to the ground and you're fighting next to your dead buddy, life really hits you in the face," says Richard. "There's no take-backs. There's no reset buttons." He assumes he made it out of the kill zone last time only because he was in a state of shock after being shot. He could feel two angels carry him to relative safety. He's now afraid of a lot of things, but says he's not afraid of death. "My obligation," he says, "is to be there to risk my life, so that sometimes they don't have to. And we're all doing it for each other, where there's so much sacrifice going on it doesn't matter what you're doing. Those are the kind of people I live my life with." There's another reason he wants to go back. Here, he had to get rid of his two-story house, because over there he had a lot of firefights on stairs. So his mind could never rest. He heard a noise on the steps, he had to clear the house. "I'm normal over there," he says. "I fight combat over here, and there is no combat. But every day I live in a threat. I'm looking for that next threat. That next ambush site. But if I go over there, I'm normal, that's what I'm supposed to do." This is the curse of PTSD, he says. You can fix an amputee by giving him a prosthetic leg. It's trying and tough. He has to learn to walk again. But "how do you get 33 Marine deaths out of your mind, the way they died, and your wounds, and combat, and seeing things you don't see every day? We try to do our best to hide that. With the loss of a limb, you don't. You get help. But what about the guy who is hanging by a thread all day long? He feels ashamed to bring it up. People are going to say, that's a wound? Like, is that really a wound? I live combat almost every day, because the same instincts that protected me are still more alive than ever. I can be in a grocery store and feel like I'm walking down the street in Fallujah. You fight yourself, with mind distortions, paranoia, hypervigilance, depression, guilt. It's so complex. And it's your mind, so you can't ever escape it. I can't ever put a prosthetic on that." +++++ Studies tell us that 20% of Iraq and Afghanistan Vets are dealing with PTSD or depression. The findings of a medical research study conducted by Rivers of Recovery in 2009 are encouraging. The study showed that combat vets with PTSD, who participated in a brief outdoor recreation, showed "less stress, fewer PTSD symptoms, and enhanced sleep quality, respectively." The study states "these results represent therapeutic shifts that extend beyond any improvements observed by some of the more traditional treatment interventions amid this population." Heroes on the Water exists to express our thanks and commitment to our wounded veterans and active duty military by delivering effective rehabilitation through kayak fishing in the outdoors. It is the right thing to do! Join us in whatever way you can to make a difference in their recovery. Sources: "Semper Fly, With wounded warriors in quiet waters", by Matt Labash, published June 20, 2011, Vol. 16, No.38, on the WeeklyStandard.com. Matt Labash is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard and the author of Fly Fishing with Darth Vader.) Medical Research Study Summary, Rivers of Recovery |
