PTSD: Advice On How To
Survive
I’ve lived with PTSD most of my adult life. It’s often
hard for me to even discuss the problems PTSD has caused me over the years. I
don’t even know anymore what kind of person I was before the war. It often
seems like I had lived another person’s life when I was young.
My childhood was nothing to brag about. I
came from a poor Italian family and we lived in a tenement in the Bottoms and then
in Over The Rhine in Cincinnati. I was well on my way to becoming a criminal
who would spend most of his life in jail when Vietnam came along.
The Marines changed my attitude, and war gave
me a different outlook on life. After being spit on at LAX on my return from
Vietnam and being shunned by the service organizations of my father’s
generation for not being “in a real war”, I kind of kept to myself for years.
I woke up every two hours. Before Vietnam I
could sleep all day and night. After Vietnam, I never just woke up. I jumped up
alert, and I still do. To me, this was normal behavior and I accepted it as
just being me.
I had to carry a gun. Once again,
normal behavior, even though before the war, I never had a gun. After Vietnam,
it became a necessity. If I pulled it, I was going to shoot, and that happened
several times. But I had a good sense of self-preservation and used it to
control a situation where I was being attacked rather than to kill anyone. I
knew if I got locked up, I couldn’t remain sane.
If you were my friend, it would take your
almost trying to kill me to make me angry enough to try to hurt you. If you
were a stranger and tried to attack me or insult me, chances are you were going
to spend major time in the hospital. I considered all aggressive strangers
objects and I didn’t care what I did to them.
My mother used to comment that I seemed to
have no emotional response to anything, and I was cold and uncaring. I never
saw myself that way.
I drank back then, whiskey, even though I
didn’t like it. One night I just stopped drinking whiskey because when I drank
I became dangerous. After I almost killed a guy one night who had struck me
from behind with a bottle (another Nam vet pulled me off of him or I would
have finished the job)
I stopped drinking.
I was fortunate enough to realize that I had
to keep iron control over myself if I wanted to survive back home. (As I
write this I saw that they just executed a 66 year old Nam vet with PTSD in
Georgia for killing a deputy during a traffic stop. His lawyers argued that he
had PTSD and should get life in prison.)
I don’t know his situation or how much combat
he went through, but I would have to say there were other outside factors
involved besides PTSD. Possibly, some kind of drug, whether illegal or for
PTSD. Courts are not likely to be convinced that PTSD made you kill a cop.
So my first advice is, if you drink, stop.
Or I should say, if you have a problem when you drink, stop all together. Some
people can have one or two drinks and be fine, but if you have the genetics for
alcohol addiction, try to control yourself. Alcohol will make you a
monster.
Don’t take PTSD or Illegal
Drugs.
Often anti-depressants or anti-psychotic
drugs can have terrible side effects and make you worse than you were before.
Plus, you become drug dependent. Many VA doctors will give you drugs to help
control symptoms, but you may often pay the price. You already have discipline
from being in the military and surviving. Use that discipline to control your
symptoms. If you try to escape with drugs, reality is always worse on the
return once the drugs wear off. Do your best to control PTSD without the pills.
Exercise several times a week.
Exercise can make you feel good about
yourself and protect your body. Walk, run, lift weights. The older you get the
harder it is to stay in shape. Exercise will give you a high once you get used
to doing it.
Worry about things you can change, not what you can’t change.
PTSD made me want to save the world. I figured
I couldn’t save myself, but the rest of the world could use someone like me to
make things right. I would see things on the news that really made me angry,
and I would go nuts with worry about things like terrorists overseas or wars or
watching protests where people screamed they want to destroy us.
One thing I learned from the 12 week PTSD
program was to worry about stuff I can change in my own life, not about things
I can’t do anything about. It’s good advice and helps keep me from going ballistic.
Don’t worry about losing your percentage if you are service-connected
for PTSD.
PTSD can be controlled but it doesn’t go
away. Vets contact me a lot worrying that the VA is going to cut their
percentage. I’ve never heard of anyone either being cut in percentage or losing
their PTSD percentage.
PTSD cannot be cured. You can only learn to
cope with it. Once you are service-connected for PTSD, it will be for life. The
only way I’ve ever seen anyone go is up in percentage.
The VA knows PTSD is permanent. They
constantly try to find cures, but in the end all they develop is ways to cope.
Don’t blame everyone for your PTSD.
PTSD in the military usually comes from war or other
major trauma involved in war. Don’t take it out on your family and friends.
It’s a reaction to combat, and once you accept that, you can learn to avoid
blaming other people in your life.
PTSD vets have extremely high divorce rates
and often lack ability to feel close to loved ones. Your family and friends are
not the enemy. They don’t understand what you went through, but you should
practice iron control over your tendency to blame others. Accept you have a
service related condition and live with it. Prayer can often help. You are not
alone in the world. PTSD support groups or individual therapy can help, for
awhile. But in the end, we must help ourselves cope.
If you can employ some of the steps I’ve
listed that I use, you won’t be cured...you will still have PTSD, but you will
have some measure of calm in your life and maybe be able to control it better.
Copyright@2015 by Dennis Latham
