Seth Moglen: Welcome to all of you. I’m Seth Moglen, co-director, with John Pettegrew, of the South Side Initiative. Tonight’s public forum is the last of the 2011/2012 Town Hall Lecture Series. The goal of the Town Hall Lectures is to bring citizens together to talk about important issues of the day and tonight certainly, we will be talking about some of the most pressing issues that we face during a time of war.
Tonight, it’s my pleasure to introduce my colleague and friend, John Pettegrew. He’s co-director of the South Side Initiative over the last 4½ years. John has organized an incredible array of public forums, lectures and conferences and done an extraordinary job of enriching public conversation in this city. I think that John’s really a model of what public intellectuals should be.
John’s also a very accomplished historian and influential scholar of masculinity. He’s the author of a book called Brutes and Suits on the emergence of modern American manhood. John’s work on masculinity has led him recently to some work that he’s been doing with veterans recently returned home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That part of John’s work is related to the forum that he’s organized tonight. I’ll leave it to John to introduce his co-panelists and I hope you’ll join me in welcoming all of them. The panel is called The Empathy Project: Understanding the Experiences of US Combat Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
John Pettegrew: Thanks, Seth. What we’ll talk about tonight is, I think, one of the most complex social problems that this country or any country could face. It is one of a constant flow of US military veterans pouring back into the United States, many of whom have been physically injured, experienced mental trauma and feel as if there is little to do to work one’s way through this host of problems that are barely understood.
As we’ll see and hear tonight, that isn’t exactly the case. There are a host of efforts and institutions and people and strategies for receiving these soldiers and Marines and others and integrating them back into the community. Indeed, that’s really a purpose of tonight’s forum; to understand the scale of the problem and what has been working, what hasn’t worked so much and what other problems and alternatives we could address and pursue.
I am joined tonight by Jason Kamora, who is a veteran himself and clinical director of the Veterans’ Sanctuary in Allentown. He’ll be speaking about the scale of the problem, I think nationally as well as locally, and talk about some of his experiences in working with veterans at the Sanctuary and what that institution itself is doing in our community. We’re also joined by Adam Feldon, who is a veteran and has been working with Jason at the Veterans’ Sanctuary. We’re also joined by Brett Christensen, who’s a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
The problem is in some ways hidden socially. At the same time, we have a host of statistics to give some substance to just how severe this problem is. In 2009, there were 1,886 suicide attempts by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, with veterans counting now for 1 in every 5 suicides in the nation. There have been more fatalities by American service people through suicide than in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is a very lethal combination of two particular problems that are often joined in some veteran; Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome and traumatic brain injury that can be severe in and of themselves alone but when combined, can be all the more difficult and perhaps fatal.
The Department of Veterans’ Affairs announced last Thursday in response to the scale of severity of this social problem that it would increase by 10% the mental health staffing across the country, adding some 1,900 therapists and other staff workers to receiving and working with returning veterans. Agency now treats nearly 400,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars for mental health problems. We’ll talk more specifically about that treatment.
I think there is a core assumption in our comments and that is that the emotional casualties - the psychological, emotional and social casualties - are not just an Army or a Marine or a Veterans’ Administration problem to be solved by the Pentagon, by the Veterans’ Administration system but a problem for the civilian system and society as a whole to work through. With that challenge and through some of my own interviews, reading of memoirs and other comments, discussions about the challenge veterans are experiencing, I think there’s a very fine line to follow here. That is that as civilians and others, we must never forget, we must never diminish the pain and anguish that soldiers and others experienced in combat in these wars. But at the same time, I think we should be careful not to pathologize combat experience, automatically assuming that one who has seen service overseas carries with him or her this problem that is indelibly marked upon their person. Those two points, I think, are in tension and somehow both need to be followed.
I’ve called this talk and a larger project of mine The Empathy Project. That’s perhaps a big word for this effort of mine to understand the experience of combat veterans, both in battle overseas and coming home back to work and back to their families. Empathy here, though, has two distinct factors that I would look into. One is that within the military itself and within the efforts to have American forces be efficient in fighting wars, empathy is a problem. It’s a pretty settled fact that at least a certain percentage of people who are placed in combat and who have been trained to pull the trigger and shoot at another human being hesitate to do so. They have basically in all wars and United States, like other governments and militaries, have tried to overcome that hesitation. A key part of that hesitation, I would argue, is the natural human facility for empathy; to imagine the other person’s position and to not follow through with what one is supposed to do within battle.
The second part of empathy, and more particular to our conversation tonight, is that as civilians, as a civilian myself, I think it’s incumbent upon us to try to, over time and through great effort, imagine the subject positions of combat veterans and other people who’ve served in the military. That is another core assumption, of my comments at least, the point being that there’s a huge cleavage between civilian society and soldiers and Marines who have served.
Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was speaking to the graduating class at West Point and said to these graduating cadets their responsibility was not only to lead Army units but to help narrow the widening divide between the American public and its military: “I fear that they do not know us. I fear that they do not comprehend the full weight of the burden we carry or the price we pay when we return from battle. A people uninformed about what they are asking the military to endure is a people inevitably unable to fully grasp the scope of the responsibilities our Constitution levies upon them.”
Let me repeat that last clause – “A people uninformed about what they are asking the military to endure is a people inevitably unable to fully grasp the scope of the responsibilities our Constitution levies upon them.” The ‘them’ that Mullen is referring to is us and his last comment there points to a crucial fact; that the United States Constitution envisioned the making of war as being a result of democratic process and decision making.
With that, it is the responsibility of civilian society to through their representatives, choose when to make war, that most fateful step that a country can take, and that after that decision, that there is an intimate relationship between the body politic and civilians and those citizen soldiers who go and fight the nation’s battles. A little bit of historical context for this problem, as I keep referring to it as, of the results of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars in terms of returning veterans. This is not a new problem; that is, the cleavage between those people who have experienced combat, served their country militarily and those who have not. We just had a wonderful play that was produced by Touchstone Theater two weeks ago, A Resting Place, that was a wonderful theatrical tribute and commemoration of the Civil War as it was experienced here in Bethlehem with one Charles Pfeiffer being a key figure in that play and indeed in the history of Bethlehem in the Civil War. Pfeiffer would go on to see battle at Gettysburg and a host of other key places in the Civil War and would come home to Bethlehem, finding his way to Indiana where he died at a very young age in an insane asylum, diagnosed as insane because of his battle experience; a very local example of this truism that no matter what we call the worst of combat trauma - shellshock, combat fatigue, PTSD that it has been with us for some time.
There still are some distinctive qualities to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. One is that there have been incredible advancements in battlefield medicine, in body armor in the 21st century, so that an unprecedented number of service members are actually surviving their injuries, both physical and then later mental. For every US soldier killed in World War One and World War Two, there were 1.7 soldiers wounded. In the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, for every soldier killed, 7 are wounded. Incredible difference, so that the United States receives back a high, high percentage of people who have been wounded in one way or another in those wars, combining with almost 42,000 injured in the two conflicts together.
A second distinctive part of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars is that they’ve been incredibly controversial. They’re not the first wars that have been controversial in the United States history but they have been wars that met with initial controversy, had gone on incredibly long period of time and have received less and less support by American civilians at home, which in my understanding of the general psychological and social experience of veterans coming home and some who experience PTSD, that is a crucial factor; the lack of knowing or understanding of what one sacrificed for, what one killed for, what one’s buddies were killed for. That is one of the answers at least to this puzzle, this dilemma; why were there so many people, a higher percentage at least of people, suffering from PTSD or similar problem in the Vietnam War compared to World War Two? Because of that lack of a distinct reason for those efforts is again one particular answer.
In filling in this historical context, let me mention three or four processes quickly that I think we have to keep our minds on to understand what we’re faced with.
One is in general historical terms in American history, a transformation from citizen soldiers fighting American-formed wars to a warrior elite doing so for the United States. This is a huge, huge transformation that I’ve written about in my book Brutes and Suits that goes along with the development since the Civil War especially, of a certain pleasure principle in killing; that is, American culture generally aggrandizing through its ideals of masculinity and other ideological projects the experience of combat, the risk-taking, the adventure of killing itself, so that a certain percentage of especially young American males - although this is not a completely gender-specific phenomenon today - see it in their interest, their self-understanding or gratification to become a warrior and go and fight one’s nation’s battles.
A second process that I’ll just mention briefly; it sounds futuristic but I’m convinced that the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars can be understood as a type of bridge from the way wars have always been fought; that is, by human beings on opposite sides to a post-human warfare of robotic weapons systems in the form of predator drone airplanes and also in the form of actual robot soldiers, if you will. We’re spending through our tax dollars billions and billions of our dollars to do just that for future American war making. What does it mean to take whatever it is that makes young American men and women go and fight and in a sense place it in technology? Because I think that’s partly what’s happening; through artificial intelligence and optical systems, place it in robotics so that automated force can do at least part of the fighting and killing that had been borne by human beings up until this point.
The third process is one that I’ve alluded to already and that is the removal of the American people from the conduct of US war. This is a huge, huge transformation with a key, key happening in this regard being the relinquishment of the power to declare war by the US Congress. It is an absolutely fundamental transformation in American history. Article 1, section 8 – “Congress shall have power to declare war”. That is no more. The last war declared in this country was World War Two. It is now widely an executive power with huge ramifications for this country and its war making.
A related process, in fact, is the all-volunteer Army formed in 1973 that, yes, puts defense of the nation and war making overseas in the hands of a regular Army, professional soldiers and Marines, but in effect has taken that force and removed it or distanced it from the people which through the Constitution, as Admiral Mullen emphasized, is the original source of that power Constitutionally. What happens is it widens or it breaches or it dissolves - whatever the word would be - the civic duty on the part of Americans to understand the circumstances going into a war; that before the war is even declared, making an informed decision about that fateful step and seeing to it that the right decision is made through representatives and through freedom of speech and whatever other means one sees fit. It basically outsources the work, the difficult work, the dangerous work, of defending the nation and making war in foreign countries to another specific class of people; a warrior elite that are separate to this body politic.
The military historian Andrew Bacevich puts it this way:
“Like mowing lawns and bussing tables, fighting and perhaps dying to sustain the American way of life became something that Americans pay others to do” after the all-volunteer force of the 1970s. You’ve heard this before, perhaps; the idea of re-instituting a draft so that kids, parents and Congress all feel a more intimate, closer responsibility to the decision making process of stepping into war. That draft also being a way to move away from what we could now understand as an economic draft; that people from lower rungs of American society in terms of economy, of race, working class people, disproportionately serving the country for whatever reasons they joined the service to begin with.
I do want to put out an idea that hopefully we can return to; what may we do as a community to get at this problem that is admittedly absolutely huge and national in scale? The Veterans’ Sanctuary, Wounded Warriors and other institutions who try to address what I just briefly summarized is key. I also want to put out the question; what might a university do to engage this problem? Universities have both long supported American war making in a host of ways, from research and development of weapons technologies to the Reserve Officer Training Corps, and also have been an institution reflexively, at least among some people, opposed to certain wars. It has been something of a reliable dissenting voice or it has at least held those dissenting voices. But what can a university do now to engage this social problem that I’ve outlined?
One answer to my own question, again that we may get back to, is the idea of speaking with veterans, understanding from them their own sense of self and what the larger whole is, and perhaps take that knowledge in the form of oral histories and other material and make it accessible to others, perhaps even through public school systems and the like, really engage this issue as one of civic discourse; when to go to war, what it means when the country does go to war, what is the experience of people who experience that conflict in the most direct way.
Jason Kamora: Good evening. Before I get started, I want to try to do something that I think usually oftentimes really shows the magnitude of some of the issues in the community. I’d like for all of you to take a moment, if you could, to participate.
I’m curious by a show of hands how many veterans do we actually have in this group tonight? Please keep your hands up, if you could. How many of you are family members of veterans or have had family members in the service; brother, sister, daughter, uncle, cousin? What about any neighbors? Co-workers of veterans? Colleagues of veterans?
Take a look around. What does this represent? The magnitude of this. I came prepared to talk about all these statistics but just to look at that as a whole, veterans, in terms of our nation, are everywhere. What does that mean? It means a couple of things.
John pointed out historically some of the things that go on. Active duty members go off to war and then there is this coming home that gets lost in the shuffle. People come home and it’s “Now what?” You see all these books now that are pointing out to that – “There’s war and then there’s the rest of my life. Now what the heck do I do with it?” The service is doing a better job, the VA’s doing a little better job, in looking at some of these complex issues but I don’t think we’ve ever really looked at them historically.
The transition from war is profound. In terms of Iraq and Afghanistan, what we’re finding is technology, while a blessing, in many cases has also been a curse in terms of the service. During earlier wars like World War Two and even Vietnam, it took months sometimes for some of these soldiers and Marines and airmen and Coast Guard and Navy folks to come back from service. They would sit in community on ships. Of course, in those communities there’d be some dialogue going on about their experiences.
Now, folks go right from the combat zone to home and there’s sometimes a disconnect or a lack of transition, the Air Force being one of the branches of service that has probably the biggest struggle with this. The Air Force doesn’t even send people to war with their unit. You have a unit you train with, preparing for war, you get deployed to war and then you come home without the same people that you served with.
I’m a recipient of that. I served at the end of the first Gulf War in the United States Air Force. I trained with other Air Force personnel and Army and Marines and so on and so forth but I was deployed as an attachment so I became a part of somebody else’s unit, an outsider to a particular battle buddy or community already. Then upon my return home two weeks post-war experience, I was now a civilian or a veteran, wearing a veteran’s hat. I got a pat on the back – “Good luck, son. Life will be different now for the rest of your life.” These are historical issues and that really needs to be looked at in our community.
There are a couple of things that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are seeing that past wars have not. Number one; in the State of Pennsylvania, they have nearly 1 million veterans alone. That’s only in one State. We’re the fourth-largest State in the country for veterans. We have a longstanding history in the community, all the way back to the Civil War, so military service has been hugely engrained in our culture as Pennsylvanians.
Currently, 75,000 have served. Most of them are National Guard and Reservists. This is the first time historically that the Reservists and National Guard have been deployed multiple times in these theaters. Many people say this is the hidden draft or we send them out to war; there are a lot of political issues around them. But we’re seeing multiple deployments.
What we’re starting to recognize now in terms of our community is that you see now because of the multitude of issues here in our community, we see the economic downturn, starting to see people losing their jobs. We’ve also seen an increase in homelessness amongst civilians as a result of being deployed as a National Guardsman, being called up to active duty service, losing their job or being downsized more or less and then coming home to nothing. They’re homeless. Their family has moved in with their family member, they have nothing. They’re in debt, they have no job, and they have nothing. Now what do they do?
We’re seeing an increase in terms of alcohol use and abuse. Again, one of the other areas that are really profound in terms of our current conflicts of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is the recognition or understanding of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and traumatic brain injury. Again, as John pointed out, because of our technology, we’re doing a much better job in terms of our medical response to these injuries on the battlefield. World War Two, Vietnam, a lot of these people wouldn’t survive. A lot of these service members wouldn’t survive these injuries. Now, we’re able to triage them right away and get them care. They’re actually doing surgeries in an aircraft flying to Germany.
It’s pretty amazing, however what we’re starting to see also is an increase of this trauma, increase of this traumatic brain injury. These folks are coming home, it’s taking some time to get transitioned back home. Along the way, they’re picking up substance abuse problems because oftentimes, a great way to treat these symptoms, while it being a short term fix, is to drink, is to use drugs. One of the biggest ones we’re starting to see across the country in terms of veterans is bath salts. We’ve had a few folks currently in our program who are on these things called bath salts, which for those who aren’t familiar with them, it’s this horrible drug that’s synthetic. It’s made by man, it’s being produced somewhere in our country and it’s being labeled as a bath salt that you think you would use in your bathtub. What’s happening is they’re actually snorting this stuff and becoming psychotic. They’re killing other people, they’re killing themselves. It’s really, really horrible, severe rage.
What happens is every time the United States addresses this, I think last fall in fact, Pennsylvania actually banned them, they just change the chemical formula a little tiny bit, put a new name on it and now it’s a cleaning product. But they’re very, very accessible so again, this is some of the problems that we’re starting to see.
Women. Historically, women have always been in supportive roles. Now, because of the change in terms of the frontlines in war, we’re not seeing the typical battlefield where your enemy is wearing a uniform and they’re standing right out in front of you. They’re everywhere, they’re blending in with the communities; there is no frontline. Women are starting to be exposed more and more to combat and as a result of this, we’re starting to see an increase from Afghanistan and Iraq in homelessness in women. We’re starting to see an increase in single parenthood issues and divorce rates starting to spike in these areas.
It’s becoming a pretty profound problem and as typical in America, and I say this wholeheartedly, once the wars fall off the radar so does the American focus, yet the problems still remain. It’s just my personal opinion but we’ll probably remain in those regions for a very, very long time as we did even with the first Gulf War, in supportive roles and they’re still going to remain in combat.
What happens with that is there remains this bimodal effect where people fall off this radar and we say, “Okay, well, the Iraq War is officially ended” but then now the folks that are serving on the Kuwaiti border, I’m sure as they become engaged, don’t get quite the same connection or such to coming home in terms of treatment and things of that nature. So there’s this disconnect even among the veterans’ community.
I wanted to point out a couple of quick statistics, then I wanted to point out a couple of things in terms of talking about the program that I currently run and also some complexity issues with PTSD and substance abuse.
John already mentioned the suicide rate. We know that historically, in every war and more so than not in the Vietnam War, we’ve lost more people from suicides post-war than in the wars themselves. That’s across the border. I refer to this book by Edward Tick, it’s called War and the Soul. Edward Tick is a spiritual psychologist. One of the things he’s done historically is he’s looked at ancient culture and tried to figure out in other countries why is war causing different rates of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, as we refer to it currently in America, that’s different in other cultures. He’s travelled to Vietnam and really looked at this.
One of the things he finds is the way that trauma in war is treated post-war. Again, in places like Vietnam and some of these other places that have been war-torn, it’s that they sit in community. Even in Indian cultures if you look back as far as the American Indians, they would sit in a tribal formation and they would share and tell these stories as a way of healing and dealing with the complexities of their experiences. More so now than ever, our veterans are experiencing multiple traumas.
Long gone are the days where you’d go and you’d spend x amount a period of time in a deployment and that’s it, then you’d come home and that’s it. Folks are getting redeployed and redeployed and redeployed and as you’re seeing publicly, sometimes even when they are reporting substance abuse problems or other issues, it’s not well understood and of course they’re sent back out into the combat zone and either being re-traumatized or something horrible happens. So there’s still a lot of work to be done in that area.
Jonathan Shay is another author. He is a psychiatrist who wrote a book called Achilles in America. If you haven’t read the book, I recommend it. The reason for that is he also looks at the history of war and warriors, the warrior archetype. He goes back as far as Ancient Rome and Greece and really looks at the complexities of this. I bring this up because John briefly mentioned about what we do as civilians or communities. One of the biggest initiatives right now across the United States is the Civilian and Veterans Dialogues. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them but it’s really about getting veterans and civilians together and having a conversation.
I won’t speak for the other vets in the room but from my experience, when someone does ask me, “Hey, are you a veteran?” oftentimes when you say yes, there’s this sort of awkwardness that follows. People don’t know how to follow it up. Sometimes they might thank you for your service, sometimes they might ask an awkward question. I get a lot of questions like “Did your dog ever get killed?”
It can be cumbersome bringing these things up, one of the things that I think as communities we can do is embrace veterans in the community by number one, sharing in the burdens. If you read Dr. Tick’s book, War and the Soul, you see this idea. He runs a program called Soldier’s Heart in upstate New York. They’re retreats across the United States. He even went to Knoxville, Tennessee not that long ago and did a retreat on the military installation there. What he’s doing is he’s showing how trauma can be treated in community and how some of these older techniques are done in terms of treating trauma.
Another area I wanted to point out is homelessness. We know homelessness is on the rise, we know it’s an initiative that the VA is looking at. Statistics such as 1 in 4 homeless folks are veterans is pretty true. I’ve tried to test this as a philosophy when I first came to Veterans’ Sanctuary. I went around Allentown and outskirt areas and as I would find some homeless folks, just bring them a cup of coffee, sit down and have a conversation. What I was surprised to find out was that’s pretty accurate in terms of locally.
There’s a plethora of reasons why they’re homeless. Some combat vets come home and it’s a readjustment period, trauma’s too much for them, they’re riddled with anger, enraged from PTSD or traumatic brain injury. Families don’t know what to do with them, don’t know how to help them, support them. A lot of veterans oftentimes struggle with asking for help. Statistically seeking, veterans that actually access treatment are very, very low. 25% of veterans go to the VA. 25%. That’s a very small representation of how many veterans there are across the United States.
The big thing right now that we’re seeing historically it was the shellshock, it was battle fatigue, then it was soldier’s heart; now it’s PTSD and now there’s even some discussion about taking the ‘D’ off PTSD because there’s stigma attached to that. Again, when we talk about active duty and reservists, there’s stigma. Who wants to say “I have a mental health issue” to their commander? There’s this fear – “If I report it to the VA and the VA talks to the DOD, that could affect my job. That could affect my promotion.” Especially somebody who maybe served a number of years in the National Guard, really wants to keep their status and wants to be able to continue their service, it can certainly affect them in that way. Even if it doesn’t affect them, it certainly causes fear, great fear.
In addition to that, again we see the rise in substance abuse. The program that I’m currently running is called Veterans’ Sanctuary. It’s a 32-bed residential program here in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The program is for veterans, men and women, who primarily have substance abuse problems but in addition to it also have trauma. We know that addiction is not a separate issue; it doesn’t happen in a bubble.
We know in veterans’ populations primarily that addiction is often caused by either wartime experiences or other experiences during their actual service, like military sexual trauma which I don’t know if any of you heard about. I don’t want to create a lot of discussion here for that but military sexual trauma is a hidden trauma in the military and it’s a trauma that affects both men and women. Women are more likely to report it but men are equally impacted by military sexual trauma.
What military sexual trauma really is, is basically being raped by someone who is of equal or higher rank than you while in the service. Not only does it erode you morally and spiritually, because this is the person that’s supposed to have your best interests in mind, but it creates a lot of shame and guilt as a result of this so people go underground with it and a lot of times, it doesn’t get reported.
You’re seeing more and more if you’ve ever been on military.com and these other sites. You’re starting to see the DOD and the VA are looking more upon this. Problem is there are only two places in the nation that can treat military sexual trauma; one’s in Ohio and one’s in Florida. Well, if you’re a single mom who just came back from Afghanistan or you’re a single father, even if you’re married and you’re working, as a lot of our service members work, access to treatment isn’t really just driving down the street and getting care.
We know historically that the VA has created Vet Centers, following the Vietnam War. Vet Centers were actually disappearing and then we had the first Gulf War, then they came back again. Now they’re starting to disappear again and then Iraq and Afghanistan kicked off, then they showed up on the planet again. They’re there but the problem lies again with access to care. As a community issue, access to care is a big part of it.
If you’re a working veteran and you’re having problems with substance abuse or PTSD but let’s say you’re still working because you’re trying to make it work for yourself, guess what? You have to go to treatment between the hours of 8:00 to 4:30. Well, how can you support your family and get care if you’re working full-time and you have this horrible addiction or you’re experiencing this trauma and it’s only open Monday through Friday from 8:00 to 4:30? Access to care is another big community issue.
At Veterans’ Sanctuary, we’re not affiliated with the VA. We have had referrals from the VA, we’ve done some contract work with the VA but we’re not the VA. I’m not saying that as a means to bash the VA by any means whatsoever but I say that because a lot of times when you say VA, you get some vets that take a step back and some take a step forward. Veterans’ Sanctuary looks at the complexities between trauma and addiction. We use techniques that were not only studied in the United States but all over the world.
One of the biggest things we use is mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). It’s a great way to treat symptoms of PTSD, mild traumatic brain injury or other post-deployment stressors. For those that don’t know what MBSR is, it’s a practice of meditation. A lot of people think meditation is this Buddhist religion type thing; no, it’s not that at all. It’s being used all over the country for things like chronic pain, another area that we focus on.
We find a lot of veterans in our communities struggling from chronic pain issues, whether it’s walking round the desert with your rucksack on, humping all that gear all the time, you start to develop arthritis in your knees or in your lower back. You go to your family doctor, you get a pain medication, and you become intolerant to the medicine so you ask for something else, something stronger. Next thing you know, you’re on a narcotic and next thing you know, you’ve got an addiction issue. The complexity of that is, “Well, my doctor’s prescribing it so it’s okay. It’s not illegal.”
For PTSD, folks who are taking benzodiazepines, anti-anxiety medications, where they’re taking it and taking it and taking it and taking it. They’re great in the short run but the problem is long term, it really develops an addiction and they never really learn to deal with the symptoms. So in addition to that, we also use a program called Seeking Safety. What that helps to do is treat the trauma two-fold; you’re treating it from the addiction standpoint and the trauma as well. We have a psychiatrist, psychologist, a psych nurse on staff, a battery of clinical folks and clinical technicians to work with veterans around the clock.
They reside within the programs and really what it is, is a subset of a community. When they’re living there, they’re in community. They get to share their experiences from their military service in community, in a therapeutic way. They get to work together, they get to eat together and they get to rebuild some of these facets of their lives.
Vets; we’re really good at some things and others, we really struggle with. An area that we really, really struggle with is connecting with people who aren’t vets. Oftentimes, we feel more aligned with others that may have shared our experience. While that’s a great thing and I honor that, I do that as well, it really draws a line in the sand in terms of civilians; we don’t really get a chance to have that dialogue.
I encourage as a community or universities, don’t just ask who the veterans are; carry on a conversation with them, get to know them. Don’t try to go in there with any kind of presumptuous conversation or anything; just ask them, “What do you want to talk about? What can you tell me about being in the military? My uncle’s in the military.” Just something basic like that. If communities can do more and more of this, we’re finding that more veterans are more likely to access treatment, get better support and oftentimes have some of these social issues addressed by getting that support within their communities.
Adam Feldon: Good evening, everyone, thank you for coming out. My name is Adam Feldon. I’m actually a National Guardsman, not anymore. I did eight years in the Guard, two deployments to Iraq.
My first one was in 2005/2006, stationed out of Al Asad Airbase in Iraq. I spent a lot of my time going around the country. I was in Ramadi, Fallujah, spent a lot of time in Baghdad, go all the way up to Tikrit. My second deployment was in 2007/2008, part of the 56 Striker Brigade, also Pennsylvania National Guard.
I wanted to talk about reintegration, my own personal story with reintegrating back into society. It’s actually pretty cool because it falls off of what both John and Jason were talking about earlier, about starting that dialogue.
One of the things that I can tell you about my own story is that it was very hard for me to actually be able to stand in front of people and talk about my experience. There’s a culture within the military, with me and my battle buddies, where we’d talk to each other – “You’re the only one I can talk to. You’re going to be the only one that understands what I’m going through. None of the civilians back home are going to understand a thing that we went through.”
You build that up in your head. You think about it and just reinforce it constantly over and over again – “You’re going to be the only one.” Then what comes? I came home and I was no longer being a National Guardsman. I didn’t go back to Iraq with a unit. I went home, had my wife’s family, my family, and all my friends from before my deployment, everyone I was going to college with, none of whom were veterans. So here I am saying I’m going to share my story and talk all my problems over with everything that’s going through my mind, through my soul, through my heart, but I have no real support base here to speak with, because I built that up in my head. I actually turned to alcohol and drugs to dull the pain, to numb it, to make the dreams go away. Luckily for me, I’m not an addict so once I initially worked it through, I just quit.
But one of the things that was hardest for me was that there were all these opportunities, I think, that I just looked over when I came back. I had people coming up to me - I had civilians coming up to me, people in my classes at school, family members - asking me, “What’s it like over there? What’d you do? Did you kill anybody? Did you see anybody die?” All these questions and I took it personally. This is something that hit the core of my being. When I was in Iraq, I remember telling a battle buddy, “It feels like my soul’s gone. I don’t feel like I have a soul anymore.”
So I come back and I get these questions that kind of irritate me. I can feel the rage welling up inside of me. I just wanted to rip their heads off. Did I kill somebody? Why am I going to discuss something like that, something to the core of my being, with you? I don’t even know you and you’ve got this smile on your face when you’re asking that. Eventually, as I worked through it, I struggled with PTSD within my own life after I returned from my first deployment.
Let’s move it into a conversation. Q&A session commences.
