Help Our Troops Overcome Drug Addiction

                                                                                         

When the art and practice of international relations, otherwise known as diplomacy, fails, we go to war. Millions of American men and women risk their lives to do the job our leaders failed to do – protect the American people, and sometimes those in other countries, and attempt to bring about peace by overwhelming the alleged enemy with military force. Hundreds of thousands of our troops die or are wounded and, of those who come home, about one third try to overcome the horrors of their experience through drug addiction.

How much help do they get? It can take six 6 months for their health and financial benefits to kick in. If being at war wasn’t the worst time period of their lives, that six months certainly is. They have virtually nowhere to turn as they relive the slaughter of their friends and co-workers, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of opposing troops, and that of millions of innocent civilians.

It’s bad over there. Sometimes the drug addiction starts even before they come home. They arrive state-side as a drug addict with no drug rehab guidance or other real addiction help available to them.

The next step for many is crime – as is the case for many drug addicts with an expensive habit. Some troops returning from combat can’t even hold down a job, how are they going to support a drug habit? By 1973, two years before combat stopped in Vietnam, there were already 150,000 American troops in prison.

Some are also committing suicide. In 2005, over 6,000 troops committed suicide. The numbers in 2007 jumped to about 1,000 per month. CBS news reported in April that the Department of Veterans Affairs was being sued by a California federal court for deliberately concealing the risk of suicide among vets. CBS had been told there were 790 suicides in 2007, but an internal email from the head of VA mental health said there were 1,000 suicides a month – and that was only the incidents that happened in VA medical facilities.

To then find out that all that happened for nothing, that it was based on faulty military intelligence – our most joked about oxymoron – leads to further personal devastation. Not only did our leaders fail in the foreign relations department, they also failed to correctly identify the real enemy. And their mistakes resulted in the deaths of millions of people, and the lives of even more were ruined. How do they sleep at night?

Is it any wonder that our troops are turning to drugs?

If you know a vet, do what you can to help them out. Get them into a good, long-term residential drug addiction treatment center that will help them overcome their drug problem, come to terms with what they’ve been through, and re-integrate into society. And hope that the new administration does not make the same mistakes.

About the author:


Gloria MacTaggart is a freelance writer that contributes articles on health.

info@drugrehabreferral.com

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