PTSD is like

Its like standing inside a tunnel looking out into the light.....staring....motionless. It can creep up on you where your internal dialogue relives right along with your mind, events, moments and things you saw or did. Things etched into your head, your mind. Sounds or events can remind you. They can quickly take you over and render you sloppy and dull. Sometimes shaking your head from side to side multiple times....... closing your eyes and shaking it out of your head as though it were a rock or chunk of something. And by shaking it, you could dispatch it from your mind and memory for the moment. But at some point it always comes back. At times, new terrors commanded your mind. But you have learned to be numb to it, to ignore it for great lengths of time. But it always creeps back in. My minds been bent, smoked, twisted and seen all manner of wonders or perversions. You just live with it, just shake it off when necessary and quickly change thoughts if you can. Weed can help, but I think it might well encourage flashbacks. Flashbacks of what ? Being a door gunner, behind a 60 machinegun. And at times as a Grunt, from the earliest times.
Our job was to insert platoons into the 'bush' and retrieve them. We also flew chase for B52's which amounted to parking five birds on a landing pad. A Cobra, a Loach and three Slicks. Playing Rummy or Spades was the usual pastime. So it wasn't all bad, but there were events and minutes spent in terror, a terror that would leave imprints. There was beauty, something timeless and colorful, in truth, most days were kind of like every other, nothing. Making the rounds, no one injured or killed, and no monsoon rains to be out in doing guard with nothing but the moon to light your field of vision. Guarding an ammo dump. Something that could go up like a million roman candles, ending in one large blast. Of Course your vaporized. So yea, guard duty was a nervous and dangerous thing. Sapper Gooks were always trying to sneak in and toss satchel bag bombs all over, causing lots of hairy scary... I paid attention on guard, and occasionally popped a flare and fired off a couple bursts or lit the whole area up with machine gun fire while we were under attack. Our places were usually large with as much underbrush removed as possible, and if possible on higher ground. But you know, this is my story, there are a thousand others from different locations and different people. Some like me, others completely unlike me in thoughts or attitudes. My Moral character was still forming, I knew right from wrong. And it all happens quickly, a blast, or AK, the sound printed on your brain. Things like this happened once in a while, a couple times a month, sometimes more. Daytime was more secure, and many many were spent on some distant Firebase. Sometimes we would fly the distance our fuel would carry us and then refuel to be able to get back. Those were the easy days. There were night time attacks. Before you think us dark and sinister, we were your kids, your brothers and sisters, we were once inocents.

a reply to: Plotus

Amen Plotus.

My PTSD isn’t from the result of combat.
Mines from being a first responder.
Like you said - printed on your brain.
A radio call came in at work not long ago.
Calling for the site nurse to get the emergency heli from town on the line and have them dispatched out here.
The radio chatter brought me back to another event.
One where I feel I should of been able to do more. If I was faster. If I got to him 1 minute earlier I might of been able to save his life.

But it didn’t happen that way. The man died and it’s haunted me.
As well, from being part of the fire department, we did a lot of hiway accident rescue and extraction.
The sight of an empty, child’s car seat...is always in my mind.

a reply to: Plotus

Being worried about dying or being gravely wounded from a sudden blast or volley of gunfire while you're driving to and fro would do a number to your head after a while. I suppose the anxiety would lessen and disappear into a vigilance after doing it safely everyday..

..until an attack happens, a firefight where you might have lost, you and your friends were about to die. Maybe one or a few of them did but you made it. Now you're back out doing the same job with the same risks that got them killed.

It gets worse. You could be one of the unlucky guys that watched his friends head explode with their brain matter, blood and guts on you and everywhere else. You could lose an eye from shrapnel only for the surgeons to discover that it was a piece of your buddies bone that got splattered.

Which brings me to my main thought, wouldn't the threat of IEDs and being kidnapped by or handed over to someone like ISIS, put on TV, tortured and beheaded with a steak knife be even more psychologically damaging than riding around Vietnam in an armored jeep worried about an ambush? Both being terrible I'm sure.

At least in Vietnam you'd probably end up in a North Vietnamese POW camp being tortured and mistreated for a while but most likely kept alive, someday to return to the states probably years later. In Iraq or Afghanistan, wouldn't the feeling be much more dreadful, knowing that if you're captured alive which is their goal you'd probably meet the fate of a butchered animal?

a reply to: r0xor

The threat of imminent death doesn't really change with the combat theater.

Not like you're thinking ahead at the time, after all.

I also think you've gotten your 'Nam ideas from movies.

Plenty of incredibly ghastly stuff happened there to our soldiers... my Dad and Uncles still have a pretty tough time talking about it.

To the OP, I've talked about it with friends who are dealing with it too and I guess I'm one of the strange ones...

But for me the trigger is the smell.

Cordite, the copper smell/taste of blood, the smell of urine and feces.

The noise triggers went away after about 20 years or so... though they are still acid-etched on the inside of your skull and will pop up sometimes.

And yea.. sometimes you are driving down the road humming a tune and you get blindsided by images.

The smells though...

If I'm firing something or at the range or whatever, it doesn't bother me.

But an unexpected whiff of burnt gun powder sends me in a bit of a tizzy sometimes.

My Uncle says that sometimes he thinks that the lucky ones were the ones that didn't come home...

I disagree.

Hang in there... there is plenty of beauty and wonder for the soul in our lives to balance out the scars.

Probably so about the movies. My Father never deployed and we never got to sit down and talk over drinks because my Mom drove me halfway across the country with a Stepdad who ended up being a complete douche. Anyways, I was told that he says he was given '___' somehow on an Army base in the Midwest, "someone slipped it in his drink at a bar" and he freaked out. Thought a werewolf was following or chasing him and was put in a padded room.

Mid to late 60's? Decades later I'd find out and read about MKULTRA. He sent me a photo sitting at a table with a shotgun, rifle, pistol, knives and simple survival gear with an open pantry with stacked Campbell's with "Y2K ready" written on the back.

Stepdad was a retired Master Sergeant Air Force and did deploy but spent most of his time at a base in Thailand. He did maintenance and repair on helicopters? Had some stories but we didn't talk much in detail. Nothing gruesome or scary.

He did say he was seeing a Vietnamese girl and was "going to get married" (I guess so he could take her with him. No idea of her age but let's just say I wouldn't be surprised if she was a wee bit too young) but her family or extended family didn't like it and there were death threats made if he saw her again and he was stationed elsewhere or sent home.

As for me, the only traumas I've had were spending 43 days in a cell with my medication at the time for anxiety stopped even though I had the prescription brought to the jail and ironically my Doctor at the time happened to also be the jail Doctor. It was a controlled substance thus it "wasn't fair to the other inmates" so I had a couple of seizures in a jumpsuit with the crotch seam completely ripped when it was given to me so I was free as a bird, on a steel bunk and a few hours of twitchy sleep for the first 2 weeks. The Doctor didn't care because like most of them he had no idea what he was prescribing, that it'd do that or the extent of the withdrawal, if one even existed.

Finding my Mother deceased and doing CPR was pretty traumatic because she was my best friend and messed me up for a couple of years. Finding a different Stepdad deceased a couple of years ago wasn't as bad because I only knew him from my teens onward.

I'm terribly edgy at times, sleep light, and assume most people I encounter are innately selfish to a fault even if well concealed, predatory and will try to take advantage of me, make me miserable. Varying levels of discomfort, anxiety, and paranoia in public. At the grocery store, I feel like every other person is taking notice of me and thinking there's something odd about me, making a judgement that I'm under the influence of something, mentally ill, or gay. I don't claim PTSD though.

a reply to: Plotus

Your post brought me out of hiding, or I should say lurking. The Headline is "PTSD is like..."

I'll finish that up for you and everybody who thinks they have it or actually suffers from it. The key words that are missing are, "whatever you want it to be."

I've posted on this subject plenty of times. I don't suffer from PTSD, I give it. ("Putting up with TDawg's SNIP daily!", as my last Top used to put it. Plenty of Soldiers, Marines and even foreign Service members will attest to this.)

I was quite the practical joker...but I was also seriously a realist. I served over three decades in the volunteer Army, I KNEW what I was getting myself into. I consider myself lucky to be at 50% disability even though family think I qualify for 100% (Cumulative)

No joking at the moment, I REALLY don't think I have any form of PTSD. I do however have a VERY short fuse when it comes to stupidity. That's why I lurk and not post here anymore. It's just gotten to political. I prefer not to speak to political zombies on either side.

My advice to you is what I do. Just accept it. It's all in the past. Ya can't forget it and I think you shouldn't. The things we all have done in life, (And I'm talking EVERYONE) should be remembered. The stories I could tell you as to how WW2, Korean War, and especially Vietnam Vets have treated to newer Vets would disgust you more than likely. And the VFW, American Legion, DAV are wonder why their membership are dwindling.

Vets need to talk to Vets, on an equal level. That's how a lot of them get through their SNIP.

"Effing 1992 InterWebz Connection!"

I remember,the rumors of war,I was almost happy because they were saying that school begging will be postponed. Than one evening when first grenade went off near by we gathered in front of the building and decided to climb a tree to see where they falling.till that summer we were playing war,the old one.from that day we we had real one.grenades and sniper fire.soon we didn't play anything no more.no light was allowed during night.sand bags on the basement windows and the duck tape on the other windows didn't mean much.car lights were also taped and only a small peace was left uncovered so people could see where they drive.I didn't know about any disorder or stress associated to events besides early memories of going to kindergarten. I was 14 and that saved me,if I were 2 years older I would end on the first line of fire 3 kilometres from my home.I just remember that we stoped playing war after that...Couldn't even watch war movies after,cold sweat would start soaking my clothes and my palms and fingers were wet like I just washed them.I'm 42 now and still can't stand any kind of aggressive or violent behaviour. But today I'm big guy armed by life of preparing for the worst while expecting the best.
Thank you guys from the shadow for bringing destruction to my land,I will see you after this is done,in will guide you trough the nightmares that you will belive is life.

Weird thing, the only medication that I've found really works with my PTSD is Fluoxetine(Prozac).
Tried several others but found all they did was drain my energy, will and creativity whereas fluoxetine did the exact opposite.

Its main benefit is that it really helped me to get my chaotic thoughts in order so that they wouldn't constantly overwhelm me, for me this was the key, the first domino, leading to an ordered and CLEAR MIND, for the first time I felt I had the clarity to understand myself, which then lead on to purpose and initiative.

Sometimes we can think it's "weak", or just wrong to take medication to deal with issues of the mind and soul but just as a broken leg requires a splint, sometimes a broken mind needs a splint too, as it rebalances, recalibrates and heals.