Healing Combat Trauma

Rudy Reyes - Serious Veteran Eye Candy

Marine Sergeant (Retired) Rodolfo "Rudy" Reyes -- USMC 1st Recon Iraq war veteran, indisputable eye candy, soon-to-expire-cover pic from the 2007 "American Heroes" calendar from FreedomIsNotFree.org, frequent search term within this site -- we salute you.  It's a belated Veterans' day thing and/or an early birthday present to myself!  Mostly everyone who comes to this site, comes through a link or through a fairly heavy, intellectual, serious search about combat trauma, PTSD, signs and symptoms, treatment protocols that work, etc., etc.  But every once in a while, and not that infrequently, actually, somebody comes who is just looking for pics of Rudy Reyes.  I feel ya.  I can completely understand why.  So in the spirit of honoring yet another veteran who serves the cause, in his own special way, here's not just pics but actual VIDEO about Rudy Reyes, from the Freedom is Not Free website, and check this out -- there's actually some very good points being made about veterans aftercare and its affordability, or lack thereof.  Go, Rudy!

(If you've read Evan Wright's Generation Kill, or Nate Fick's One Bullet Away, both about the platoon in the 1st Reconnaissance battalion in which Fick and Reyes served in Iraq, you've been introduced to Rudy Reyes already.  Here's a pic of Nate Fick and Rudy Reyes from their tour in Iraq with 1st Recon that was on the web a while back, probably from Wright's book.  And here's the cover pic of Rudy Reyes from the current philanthropic calendar for Freedom is Not Free, before it got airbrushed a bit more.   Swoon, faint, thud...).

Editor's Note: Apparently Generation Kill is going to become a 7-part miniseries on HBO, and Rudy Reyes is tapped to play himself.  Hre's the link to the news on HBO (see item from June 1, 2007).

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Update: I recently got a chance to communicate with former First Recon Marine and current international heartthrob, Rudy Reyes, one of the stars of the HBO miniseries about Generation Kill (linked here), and learn what his future plans are -- and they're exciting.  (Searches for Rudy Reyes skyrocketed this week, coming from places as disparate as Jack in the Box and the U.S. Senate, and from Alaska to Argentina.  I joke that everyone but the Pope searched for Rudy Reyes this week, and perhaps even him.  Reyes just got an agent -- William Morris -- (he's gonna need one!) -- there are some stupendous shots of him on the Web -- and there are plans for him to release an undoubtedly hotly-anticipated workout video and more, based on the concept of "Hero Living."  Can't wait to see what that's all about. (My semi-educated guess is his eventual website will be, www.RudyReyes.com, but currently there isn't any content posted there -- so check back periodically to see when it is.)

Nate Fick's Inspirational Stance on Veterans Care

Last year around this time I had the pleasure of meeting Nathaniel Fick, author of the stupendous One Bullet Away: the Making of a Marine Officer.  (Here he is at the Marine Ball at the Harvard Business School, where he is an MBA candidate, signing a few copies of his book.)  Whenever I think of combat trauma, I think of how inspirational Fick's own words on the subject were.  Writing in an article in the Boston Globe from August 28, 2005, entitled, "Coming Home...to What?" Fick wrote about the need to take veterans' psychological health seriously on their return from combat, possibly even mandating screening for combat trauma/PTSD.  Said Fick at the time:

The screenings are only one step in the long process of reintegrating combat veterans, but mandating them would correct a dangerous oversight and better serve both veterans and the communities where they live. To have value, though, the screenings must be done right.  Members of the active-duty forces are already subject to post-deployment mental evaluation, as are the National Guards of several states. These screenings often involve little more than filling out forms.

I remember slogging through my own mental health questionnaire after leaving Iraq, answering questions such as ''Did you ever feel that your life was in imminent danger?" Yes.  Or ''Check all that apply: I saw the dead bodies of a) enemy combatants; b) American forces; c) civilians; d) all of the above." D.

Answers like mine should have prompted some sort of follow-up, but none came.

Psychological screenings in a vacuum are worse than a waste of time because they give a false sense that someone has been ''cleared." The main lesson of my experience is that the recovery process takes time, and healing only happens in community. Screenings can be gateways to those communities, both formal ones such as therapy groups and counseling sessions, and the informal networks of friends, neighbors, and colleagues with whom we live.

In a war whose burden is borne almost exclusively by the tiny minority in uniform and their families, veterans' care is one place we can all make a difference."

Nate Fick's book, One Bullet Away: the Making of a Marine Officer, is well worth reading, as is the rest of his writing.  But most of all, I appreciate his inspirational stance on veterans issues -- that taking care of veterans really is the second half of the social contract, if the first half is sending them off to war on our behalf.

"Must Have Been a Real Mean Bottle" - Veterans, PTSD and Substance Abuse

The relationship between trauma and substance abuse, or in our case, PSTD and self-medication through drugs and alcohol, is well-known. Some "sobering statistics" about substance abuse and veterans -- pun quite intentional -- follow here:

• Substance abuse rates are higher among veterans than their non-veterans counterparts.
• 76% of all homeless veterans suffer from drug, alcohol, or mental health problems (National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients, 1999).
• According to an Army Post-Deployment Reassessment Study completed in July of 2005, alcohol misuse among soldiers rose from 13% among soldiers to 21% one year after returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.

(These statistics from the excellent fact sheet at the National Veterans Foundation - "The Lifeline for America's Veterans" -- called "Facts about Veterans: Needs and Solutions." Click here for the link to the fact sheet; click here for the link to the organization.)

There's even at least one scholarly book written on the subject, Trauma and Substance Abuse: Causes, Consequences, and Treatment of Comorbid Disorders, edited by Paige Ouimette, Ph.D., and Pamela J. Brown, Ph.D. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association (2003).  [Editor's note: "comorbid" means "appearing together."]

In a review of it by psychiatrist Edward J. Khantzian, M.D., of Haverhill, Massachusetts, he writes that his experience, "spanning four decades of clinical work involving patients with substance use disorders," has led him to conclude that "suffering is at the heart of addictions.  Nowhere is this more evident than with individuals who have developed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and resorted to addictive drugs to medicate the distress and pain associated with PTSD."

In future blog posts, we'll cover this topic in greater depth, but for the present, it's important to note how closely intertwined the two concepts are: if combat trauma or PTSD is a "normal reaction to abnormal events," it's no surprise that so many veterans of combat attempt to medicate the most troubling and painful experiences away through misuse or overuse of drugs and alcohol.

(The blog post's title comes from the country song, originally written by Vince Gill, and performed by Bob Seger and Kid Rock on Seger's latest album, Face the Promise.  To see a video of Seger and Rock singing this in concert recently on YouTube, click here.)

The toll free number for the National Veterans Foundation is 1-888-777-4443.

Good Video about PTSD and Re-Adjustment

William R. Keating and the the Norfolk County District Attorney's office in Canton, Massachusetts has put together a wonderful, 10 minute video that's on YouTube about what PTSD is, to raise awareness about the struggles that returning combat veterans may be going through.  The video is ten minutes long; and while it's completely good and effective at what it does, it would be even better if it were the first in a series about the challenges veterans face in readjusting to civilian life.  However, in ten short minutes, it manages to cover many of the issues, show veterans where help can be found, and put a relatable, human face on the topic of PTSD and combat trauma.  Good for Massachusetts -- it makes me proud to be from there.  The title of the video is the fairly generic, but still cool "PTSD and Veterans: Beyond the Yellow Ribbon."  Special thanks to the Norfolk County DA's office for taking the time to make this video available to the public.

(Note: Don't worry -- the video isn't just some guy talking -- it's pretty comprehensive.  They just picked an odd still to illustrate it with.  And while its focus is current returning vets, there is a wide selection of veterans interviewed in the video, including those from previous wars.)